Small Town Scary (Cozy Mystery Collection) Read online

  Mrs. Dollner looked on humorously as Howard easily caved. “Alright, I’ll see what I can do. But you promise it will be our secret?”

  “I promise.” I fluttered my eyelashes coquettishly.

  Grabbing a huge key ring from the desk drawer, Howard led us to the elevator and up to Uncle Sanford’s floor. Fumbling with the keys for a minute, he finally found the one that unlocked Uncle Sanford’s door and let us inside.

  “Do I get a kiss?” Howard asked hopefully.

  “Yes, you do,” Mrs. Dollner cut in, planting a noisy kiss on the man’s cheek.

  “Er, I meant from the girl,” he grumbled.

  “A kiss is a kiss. And I’m still a girl at heart.” Mrs. Dollner smirked at him as I chewed the inside of my cheeks to keep from exploding with laughter.

  “Make sure you lock the door on your way out,” Howard instructed, plodding down the hall with shoulders hunched in disappointment.

  Erupting into giggles, I said, “I’m so glad you’re here, Mrs. Dollner! What would I do without you?”

  “Kiss that old man! That’s what you’d do!” Mrs. Dollner giggled along with me.

  I felt like a burglar entering my uncle’s apartment. Tip-toeing across the living room, I plopped onto the sofa, folding my hands in my lap and resolving to at least wait a few minutes before launching into a full-fledged snoop session of the place.

  “Tired, dear?” Mrs. Dollner guessed.

  “No, just feeling guilty about sneaking into my uncle’s apartment.”

  “Well, I don’t feel guilty. You stay here. I’ll go look around.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything for you to find!” I hollered after her as she disappeared into my uncle’s bedroom. “I really just wanted to talk to Sanford and see if he knew what my mother wanted us to look for in Aunt Connie’s house!”

  Ignoring me, Mrs. Dollner could be heard rummaging around in the bedroom as pangs of guilt assaulted me. If Uncle Sanford came back early from his Bingo game, then he would hate me as much as Aunt Louise and Aunt Patricia did. Maybe more. I tried to stay calm as closet doors slammed shut and glass crashed into the floor.

  “I broke a lamp!” Mrs. Dollner announced.

  Leaping up from the couch, I cajoled, “Why don’t you just sit with me in the living room? We don’t want to destroy my uncle’s apartment…”

  Mrs. Dollner stared me meaningfully in the eyes as she lay a sealed cardboard box on the bed. Bound with masking tape, the unopened box had one word printed on it in black Magic Marker: LOCKE.

  Chapter 9

  “This is the lockbox from my vision. It has to be,” I murmured incredulously. “It’s just not what I thought it would look like…or where I thought I’d find it.”

  “It’s a Locke box,” Mrs. Dollner pronounced, equally astonished.

  “I’m afraid of what I’m going to find inside,” I said, suddenly feeling timid.

  “Be brave, Marisa! Open it!” Mrs. Dollner’s eyes gleamed fiercely.

  Peeling back a layer of masking tape, I loosened the seal on the box. Another layer of tape ripped away. And another. Until the box was naked and ready to be opened. Sharply taking in a breath, I unfolded the flaps and stared inside. A pile of papers filled the space, just like in my vision.

  “What are all these papers? Read them! Read them out loud!” Mrs. Dollner urged.

  I removed a wrinkled cover sheet that read Declarations Page on the top. “Midwestern Regional Life Insurance,” I read aloud. “Policy for Constance Locke Delaney. Primary beneficiary: Sanford Locke. Amount of payout: $200,000 with $100,000 additional for accidental death.”

  The stunning words morphed into sinister conclusions inside my head. Uncle Sanford was the murderer! He had killed his older sister in order to pocket 200 grand. And he had tried to make her death look accidental in order to rake in an extra 100 grand!

  “I can’t believe this,” I breathed with tremors rocking my spine. “Uncle Sanford killed Aunt Connie to get a life insurance payout!”

  “That’s what it looks like, dear. But are you sure? It seems so strange that he would be named the beneficiary. Aren’t they practically the same age?” Mrs. Dollner questioned.

  “Aunt Connie was seven years older. And she had no children. A younger brother seems like the most logical person to leave life insurance money to,” I calculated.

  “Not in my eyes! Why didn’t she leave it to you or Penelope? Her young nieces who would benefit from it far more than some old hound dog?” Mrs. Dollner chortled.

  I sighed sadly. “Maybe she didn’t care for us very much after all. Maybe she hated my mother just like Aunt Louise and Aunt Patricia. But she did a better job of hiding it,” I conjectured with a despondent frown.

  “Your relatives are awful! Don’t take that the wrong way, dear. But honestly, there’s usually only one bad apple in a family. It seems like yours has got a whole tree!”

  “A whole tree of sour apples. You’re absolutely right,” I said glumly. “There’s still one unanswered question, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why Uncle Sanford tried to frame my mother by poisoning the coffee rather than a drink that someone else made.”

  “It could have been a split second decision. I mean, he must have poisoned the coffee when we were all standing around the beverage buffet that your mother set up. When else would he have had a chance?” Mrs. Dollner sorted through the circumstantial evidence.

  “But I drank the coffee too, remember? Maybe he poisoned the pot and Aunt Connie’s cup when we were all headed into the dining room and there was enough commotion for people not to notice.”

  “Yes, that would make perfect sense. You’ve figured it all out!” Mrs. Dollner said with satisfaction.

  “No, I haven’t. I know there’s one more piece to slide into place. And it’s why Uncle Sanford had a vendetta against my mother,” I insisted.

  Gently, Mrs. Dollner reminded, “Well dear, we’ve already established that everyone in your father’s family had ill feelings towards her. Maybe Sanford just didn’t care if she took the fall.”

  “I feel like it’s more than that…” My voice faded as I heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. “Oh no! He’s back early!” I hissed.

  “Let’s hide!” Mrs. Dollner suggested frantically as I pulled the door to the bedroom shut.

  Stiff like logs, we pressed ourselves flat into the wall, as I hoped Sanford wouldn’t come into the bedroom. Whistling a tune, my murderous uncle approached the bedroom door as my worst fears were realized. Opening the door, he stepped inside, eliciting a squeaky scream from a jittery Mrs. Dollner.

  Eyes blazing, Uncle Sanford jerked in place as he saw us leaning back against the wall. Severely spooked, he clasped his hand over his heart and groaned morbidly. I watched in fascinated horror as he tumbled to the ground and crunched into a fetal position.

  “He must have had a heart attack!” I screamed.

  “We scared him to death,” Mrs. Dollner said gravely.

  “Death? No…he can’t be…dead…” I knelt alongside his motionless body, pressing two fingers near the jugular vein in his neck and feeling nothing.

  “He’s dead,” Mrs. Dollner reiterated. “A massive heart attack. That’s the same way my husband died.”

  Indignantly, I gawked at the shriveled up body on the floor, devastated that I hadn’t gotten a confession out of him. “How am I going to prove that he murdered Aunt Connie if he’s dead?!”

  “The life insurance paperwork is a start,” Mrs. Dollner offered.

  “It’s not enough!” I wailed, grabbing the box and turning it upside down.

  The papers landed in a haphazard mess on the floor as I remained on my knees, sifting roughly through the documents. “There has to be something else here! Something else that will prove he did it!”

  “Dear, I know you’re upset, but we need to call 911. A man just died in our presence.”

  “You call 911! He’s beyond saving,
but my mother isn’t.”

  “And what are we going to tell the police? That we had Howard sneak us into Sanford’s apartment? And that we hid behind Sanford’s door and terrified the man to death?” Mrs. Dollner demanded in a fluster.

  “No, we’re going to have to lie! We’ll say that we were visiting with Uncle Sanford and he collapsed on the floor. We didn’t kill him!” I shouted, even though deep down I felt responsible for the man’s sudden death. But he was a murderer, and he got off easy. If he hadn’t dropped dead of a heart attack, he would have spent the rest of his golden years in a deplorably filthy cell. In a sick sense, I had done him a favor.

  While Mrs. Dollner communicated with 911, I tore through the papers, meticulously scanning every line. Exasperated, I jumped to my feet as another idea occurred to me: old Uncle Sanford had a computer. If I could log onto that computer and access his internet browsing history, then I might be able to find the proof needed to free my mother.

  “The paramedics are on their way,” Mrs. Dollner announced, following me into the living room where Uncle Sanford’s clunky early model laptop sat on an oak desk. “What are you doing now?”

  Ignoring her pesky question, I switched on the computer, hoping it wasn’t password protected. It wasn’t. Impatiently, I waited for the archaic system to warm up, tapping my fingernails on the desk.

  Finally, the system booted and displayed Uncle Sanford’s desktop. I clicked the mouse onto the internet and went directly to Browsing History. If Uncle Sanford had deleted his browsing history, then the only way to access his searches and downloads would be through the hard drive. And only a computer expert would know how to maneuver the tricky hard drive.

  “Oh, Uncle Sanny, you fool. You didn’t delete anything! You probably didn’t even know how!” I cried excitedly as the screen revealed an extensive browsing history with precise time and date stamps.

  “I think you’ve mined gold,” Mrs. Dollner commented as I scrolled down the list.

  Damning search terms like “cyanide poisoning,” “life insurance payouts,” and “how to make a murder look accidental,” were rampant in Uncle Sanford’s browsing history. I gasped and laughed softly, unable to comprehend how much pertinent information was being spoon fed to me.

  “Look at all this! This is exactly what we need! There’s no way Captain Davis will keep my mother in jail after I bring this computer to him!”

  Folding up the laptop, I confiscated it and headed towards the bedroom to clean up the papers and shove them in the box. Even without a confession…even without a living perpetrator…I had gathered enough evidence to make Perry Mason proud. With any luck, my mother would wake up in her bed in Minneapolis tomorrow feeling refreshed rather than achy from a lumpy army cot. Hugging the box to my chest and tucking the laptop under my arm, I sprinted over to the front door, deftly opening it with my foot. On an unstoppable mission, I hurried into the hallway, feeling a surge of superhuman strength and adrenaline carry me.

  Panicked, Mrs. Dollner called me back. “Marisa! You can’t leave me here with Sanford’s body! Please! Don’t go yet! Wait until the paramedics come!”

  Plowing ahead towards the elevator, I declared: “I’m not waiting for anything! And you don’t have to stay here! Come on, Mrs. Dollner, we’re driving back to the jailhouse!”

  Chapter 10

  Stomping into the jailhouse, biceps aching from hauling the evidence through the parking lot and security checkpoints, I sought out my arch enemy: Captain Davis. He didn’t get to eat my mother’s Thanksgiving feast, so let him eat every single one of his words. Mrs. Dollner had fretted during the entire car ride, aghast that we had left a dead body to rot in an apartment. No matter how many times I had tried to reassure her that the paramedics would be there momentarily, her conscience had still been overcome with guilt.

  As I took bold strides to pinpoint Captain Davis, the old lady whispered, “We were witnesses to Sanford’s death! Isn’t it against the law to leave the scene of such an incident?”

  “Shhh!” I hushed ferociously.

  “But, Marisa…”

  “It’s against the law to keep an innocent woman incarcerated when all the evidence points to another perpetrator,” I stated frankly. “Once again, I’ve done the police’s job for them. They should all be thanking me after this, not scolding me for leaving that evil old man’s body!”

  “Visiting hours are over, ladies,” Captain Davis announced, emerging from a corner vending machine with a can of Dr. Pepper.

  “I didn’t come back to visit my mother. I came to show you this.” I shoved the box and computer into his arms.

  “What is all this?” He demanded impatiently.

  “The information you would have needed to convict the murderer, Sanford Locke.”

  “What do you mean would have needed?”

  I prepared a lavishly decorated lie. “Apparently, his conscience was too heavy a burden for him to bear. He passed out while we were visiting him in his apartment. Seems like he had a heart attack.”

  “Yes,” the quick-witted Mrs. Dollner interjected, easily catching on. “He had confessed the murder to us and then all of a sudden got chest pains.”

  “But you don’t have to believe us. Just check out the life insurance policy. And the browsing history on his laptop,” I said slyly, thrilled to lay the final brick in the foundation.

  Skeptically, Captain Davis pored over the materials, checking everything he read twice as though unwilling to believe it. “This is very incriminating,” he admitted.

  “Incriminating?” I balked. “It’s a slam dunk! This is the kind of evidence prosecutors dream of!”

  “The validity of these documents still has to be established by a forensics team. And we need a technical expert to verify that the computer hadn’t been tampered with. Anyone with access to Sanford Locke’s computer could have conducted these searches in order to frame him,” Captain Davis said stubbornly, snapping open his can of Dr. Pepper and taking an obnoxious sip.

  “Are you kidding me? It’s like I just said the sky is blue and you’re saying it’s red! What more do you want?” I demanded furiously.

  Instead of waiting for an answer, I dove into the box, desperately searching for the answer that I hadn’t been able to uncover yet: why did Sanford want to frame my mother? Basic in-law rivalry didn’t seem to be a strong enough motive. While Captain Davis slurped his soda, Mrs. Dollner and I sorted through the disorganized heap of papers.

  “What’s this?” I whispered, spotting a handwritten envelope addressed to my mother.

  “Open it!” Mrs. Dollner cried.

  Noting that the envelope bore no postmark date, and had therefore never been mailed, I ripped it open with trembling hands. In the top right-hand corner the sheet was dated: June 5, 1986.

  In awed silence, I read the contents of the letter as both Mrs. Dollner and Captain Davis followed along over my shoulders:

  Darling Denidra, why do you ignore me? Why do you refuse to answer all my letters and calls? Don’t you know how much I love you? Don’t you know how I have longed for you? Ted can’t love you like I can. If only you would give me a chance, I could be more of a man to you than my brother ever could. Won’t you come to me? Just once? Let us share a night of unbridled passion and then you can decide if you still want to ignore me. But I think you’ll be begging for more…

  Revolted, I tossed the letter aside, diving into the box and finding a few more similar artifacts from various years in the 1980’s. Glancing over at Captain Davis, I sighed with relief to behold the change in his expression. Finally, he was in my court.