Blackmoore Sisters 01-Dead Wrong (5 page)

Jolene’s eyes went wide. “I don’t think we should, Mom told us not to.”

Mom didn’t know we’d be scrambling to come up with tax money or trying to avoid getting charged with murder.

Cal leaned back on the couch, stretching out his long legs. “Well, it’s up to you guys, but if you need my help in figuring out what anything is worth, let me know.”

Morgan studied Cal from the other side of the room. She knew his intent was honest, he really did want to help and he did have a lot of knowledge about antiques since he’d been running his family pawn shop for almost a decade. She knew they could trust him and she filed the information away for later in case they got desperate for money.
 

Cal was about the nicest guy she knew. Tall, dark and handsome, he was also the most eligible bachelor in town. It was rumored that women pawned jewelry at his shop just to talk to him, hoping for a date. Morgan didn’t know how true that was, but he sure would be a good catch for the right women. Morgan herself might have been interested, but there was only one man she would ever love and he’d left town … and her … years ago.

“Okay, so what do we do now?” Celeste interrupted Morgan’s thoughts.

“About what?” Jolene asked.

“We have to do something to help prove Morgan didn’t kill Prudence Littlefield.”
 

“I don’t know how much we really need to do. Don’t you guys think the police will find the real killer?” Morgan asked.

“Pffft.” Fiona waved her hand in the air. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not going to sit back while the police bumble their way through an investigation. There’s a killer out there and I don’t care what Jake Copper says, I’m going to find out who it is.”

She glanced around the room piercing each of them with her steely blue gaze.

“Now, who’s with me?”

Fiona woke up the next morning in a tangle of sheets. The questions running around in her head had kept her awake all night. Who could have killed Prudence?
 
Why? What should they do to find the killer?

She swung her legs over the bed and looked out the window. Squinting, she brought her hand up to shade her eyes from the glare of the morning sun reflecting off the water. It was just shortly after sunrise and looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. But somehow, Fiona wasn’t enthusiastic about getting out of bed.

Coffee … she needed coffee.

She stood up and stretched, wincing at the cracking sound coming from her back. Throwing a sweatshirt on over the tee-shirt and sweatpants she wore to bed, she wrapped her long red curls in a ponytail and headed down to the kitchen.

The front stairs creaked as she walked down them, echoing eerily throughout the silent house.
Was everyone else still asleep?

They had stayed up late the night before, hashing out a plan of action. Whoever had killed Prudence must have been in the coffee shop when she had her run in with Morgan, or at least heard about it from someone who was there. Fiona and Morgan would try to find out who was in the coffee shop that morning. Celeste’s job was to find out if any of her customers at the yoga center knew anything and Cal was going to ask some of his seedier clients at the pawn shop what they knew about it. Fiona didn’t want Jolene getting involved, but Jolene had insisted on asking around to see if any of her friends had heard anything about the murder.

Fiona padded into the kitchen, feeling the cold of the granite tile on her bare feet. She made her way to the coffee maker and popped in a k-cup. She really needed a large latte to get her going, but this would have to do until she could make it to the coffee shop.

“Meow.” Belladonna jabbed at her calf, the needle-like claws raking her flesh.

“Ouch! Cut that out.” Fiona swatted at the cat with her foot.

Belladonna responded by trotting over to the kitchen door and scratching at it. “Meow!”

“Oh, you want me to let you out. Why didn’t you just say so?” Fiona took her cup of steaming coffee and walked over to the door. Peeking out the window, she could see the sunlight hitting the tiny plants in Morgan’s herb garden.
 

She opened the door and Belladonna streaked out into the garden. Fiona followed relishing the feel of the dew soaked grass on her bare feet, even if it was a little cold.

She turned her face to the sun and closed her eyes, inhaling the bitter aroma of the coffee.
 

“Meooooow.”
 

Fiona opened her eyes and looked toward the cat who was scratching at the ground.
 

“Belladonna, stop that! Morgan will be mad if you dig up her plants.”

Belladonna didn’t stop. She dug even more furiously at the ground. Fiona’s brows knit together as she watched the cat. She was digging in an isolated part of the garden … one Morgan hadn’t planted in yet.
 

“I hope you aren’t digging up a dead mouse.”

Fiona walked over. Looking down at the patch of dirt Belladonna was working on, she saw something strange. She bent down for a closer look.

“What’s this?” She tugged at the bright orange fabric.

Her heart froze when she recognized the sunflower scarf in her hands.
 

Prudence Littlefield’s scarf. The one she was wearing the day she was murdered.

 
Fiona couldn’t help but wonder, what was it doing in Morgan’s garden?
 

“If you ask me, it was Berta Crumm who done it.”

Fiona narrowed her eyes at Agatha Beesley who stood on the other side of her jewelry case, trying a carnelian bracelet on her wrist.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Berta and Prudence had a long going feud,” she said twisting her ample wrist to study the bracelet from different angles.

Who didn’t Prudence have a feud with?
 

Agatha glanced around the shop then leaned in toward Fiona, lowering her voice. “Prudence stole Ed away from Berta, you know.”

Fiona made a face. Picturing a love triangle between Prudence, Ed and Berta, even in their younger days was too much. She gulped down the rest of her latte wishing the cup held something stronger.

“So, you think Berta might have killed Prudence because she stole Ed form her fifty some-odd years ago? It hardly seems likely she would have waited that long.”

Agatha nodded, returning her attention to the bracelet. “They’ve had quite a few fights about it over the years, maybe the opportunity just presented itself.”

Fiona looked across the shop at Morgan who was busy preparing a salve of ground up jewelweed to help someone with a bad case of poison ivy. She’d arrived late at the shop after getting their tea and coffee from the cafe and hadn’t told Morgan about the scarf, yet. Her stomach churned just thinking about it. She was afraid of what Morgan might say about the scarf being buried in the garden.
Did she bury it there, and, if so, why?

“I’ll take this and those matching earrings.” Agatha interrupted her thoughts.

Fiona packaged up the jewelry and rang up the sale, thanking Agatha for her purchase and her information.

The bell over the door announced Agatha’s departure and Morgan looked up, meeting Fiona’s eyes.

“We should at least talk to Berta,” she said.

Fiona nodded. “And figure out anyone else who might have wanted her dead. She was mean to almost everyone, maybe there are other people who would have wanted to kill her.”

“Maybe she ran into someone in the woods, was her usual nasty self, and they killed her in a fit of anger.”

“We should probably talk to her husband too,” Fiona said. “The spouse is the first person they usually question in the movies. And we need to come up with a list of everyone who witnessed your conversation in the cafe that morning.”

Morgan sighed. “Jeez, almost half the town was there.” She closed her eyes and chewed on her bottom lip. “I remember seeing Elle from the bakery, Katie Morton, Sandy Shawnee, Eli Stark…” Her voice trailed off. “It’s no use. We could never talk to all these people. How will we narrow it down?”

Fiona felt her stomach sinking. Morgan was right. Too many people had been in the cafe. Not to mention that word had probably spread all around town about their altercation. Anyone could have known what Morgan had said to Prudence that day.

They sat in silence, each of them wrestling with their own thoughts. The grandfather clock, passed down by some distant relative, tick-tocked off the seconds measuring the passage of time.
Time.

“That’s it!” Fiona snapped her fingers.

Morgan raised her eyebrows. “What?”

“Maybe instead of trying to prove who
did
do it, we can prove that you
couldn’t
have done it.” Fiona held her breath waiting to see Morgan’s reaction. She
did
feel sure her sister couldn’t have killed Prudence despite the incriminating scarf in her garden, didn’t she?

“How would we do
that
?” Morgan narrowed her eyes, tilting her head to one side.

“Easy. You came here straight after you left the coffee shop, right?”

Morgan nodded.

“Then all we need to do is establish a timeline and prove that you didn’t have time to kill Prudence.”

“But we don’t even know exactly what time she was killed … maybe we can get that information from Jake,” Fiona ignored the mischievous glint in Morgan’s eyes and pursed her lips.

“No, we can’t trust him. But we
can
trust Delphine, I’ll see if I can get the time of death from her. But we do know she was strangled in the woods in between the coffee shop and her house.”

“Which is only about one quarter mile from here.”

“How fast can you run a quarter mile?”

“Run? You know I never run.” Morgan laughed.

“Well, if you just strangled someone, you might be running.”
 

Morgan shrugged. “I don’t know. Five minutes maybe?”

“But you’d have to go out of your way to get to the woods. We need to find out exactly
where
Prudence was killed. Visit the scene of the crime, so to speak. Then we can figure out how long it would take you to go from the cafe, to the scene, strangle her and then come here.”

“How long do you think it takes to strangle someone?” Morgan asked.

“I have no idea, but if we can prove that you wouldn’t have had time, they’ll have to drop the charges.”

“Yes, but I still don’t see how we can
prove
it.”

“Well, I remember looking at my watch when you came in because I was dying for my latte. It was just after ten past eight. Maybe someone who was in the coffee shop will remember what time you left?”

Morgan looked at her dubiously. “Do you really think so?”

Fiona sighed. It
was
a long shot, they needed something more concrete.

“Wait a minute … did you get a receipt?”

“Probably, I usually just stuff them in my jeans and then take them out and toss them on laundry day.” Morgan’s face brightened. “Hey it might still be in here!”

Fiona watched Morgan dig in her pockets, a cloud passing over her face as she came up empty.
 

“I was wearing these yesterday. They took everything out of the pockets at the jail, so, if I have one, it must be in the envelope they gave me.”

“We’ll look for that tonight. It might be a great way to prove you are innocent. If the police will believe me when I tell them what time you got here …”

Morgan nodded. “Yeah, seems like Overton might not go for that. But it’s worth a try.”

 
“Okay, well anyway back to—”

Fiona was interrupted by the trilling of her cell phone on the workbench behind her. She turned to look at the display and her heart lurched. Jolene. She never called her at work unless something was wrong.

She dived for the phone. “Hello?”

“Fiona?
 
It’s Jolene. You guys better get home quick. The police are here and they’re digging up the yard!”

Skidding her truck to a stop at the edge of the driveway, Fiona jumped out, her heart pounding in her chest as she ran to the garden on the East side of the house.

Her body tensed with anger when she saw what was going on. Sheriff Overton stood watch over Jake Cooper and another officer while they turned the earth over with shovels. She noticed they were in the exact area where she had found the scarf.
How did they know exactly where to look?

Jolene stood off to the side, her eyes wide. Morgan ran to her and put a comforting arm around her.

Fiona stood frozen, staring at the men, trying to get her mouth to work when the screech of tires in the driveway caught her attention. She turned her head in time to see Delphine running toward Overton flapping her arms.

“Just
what
do you think you are doing?” she demanded.

Fiona felt her stomach roil with anger at the smug look on Overton’s face. He stared Delphine down, his tongue switching the toothpick from side to side.