A Puzzle in Paxton Park Read online

  Shelly blew out a long breath. “Murdered,” she said thinking about the situation. “Could she have shot herself? Committed suicide?”

  Juliet’s blue eyes widened. “Suicide? Oh, I don’t know. Wouldn’t she have pulled over? Why would she do that in a moving vehicle?”

  “Maybe she got bad news. She might carry a gun in her purse. Something may have upset her and she grabbed the gun out of her bag and then….” Shelly let her voice trail off. “It’s possible, isn’t it?”

  Juliet huffed. “If that’s what she did, she’s lucky she didn’t kill anyone in town.” Sipping her tea, her eyes narrowed and she straightened up. “You know what? I think I do recognize that car. There’s a woman who works at the resort, in the financial office. She’s an accountant. She just got a new car.” A look of apprehension raced over Juliet’s face. “Oh, gosh. Is she the dead woman in that car?”

  “What’s her name?” Shelly asked.

  “Emma. Emma Pinkley.”

  “I know who Emma is. I met her at a resort employee event. You think that was her car?” Shelly asked, her voice tinged with worry.

  “What color was it?” Juliet wasn’t sure she was correctly remembering the color of the car that crashed.

  “Um, a dark color?” Shelly asked. “I can’t be more specific than that. It’s evening. It wasn’t under a streetlamp.”

  “Let’s go back and see.” Juliet got up from her seat. “It just can’t be Emma.”

  The two young women hurried the few blocks back to the accident scene. The road had been blocked off and an officer stood at the corner keeping people from wandering closer. Separate crowds of people stood on the sidewalks on opposite sides of the street watching what was going on.

  Juliet stood on tiptoes trying to see over the people’s heads. “What kind of a car is it?”

  A man standing near the front told her the make and model of the crashed vehicle.

  “What color is it?”

  “Dark green,” the man reported.

  Juliet’s hand flew to her mouth.

  “Is that what Emma drives?” Shelly asked and when Juliet nodded, she tried to calm her friend. “Other people drive the same kind of car. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s Emma’s car.”

  “I bet it is though.” Juliet’s face had blanched. “I have a bad feeling about it.”

  Shelly asked the people standing around them, “Has the driver been identified?”

  No one knew for sure.

  A middle-aged man who was watching from the edge of the group moved closer to Shelly. “I was near the car right after it crashed. A few people rushed over to help. I offered to help them move the woman from the car, but they thought it was best not to jostle her. Someone took the wallet from her bag and found the license. The woman’s name was Emma something. I didn’t catch the last name.”

  Juliet groaned. “Oh, no.”

  Shelly slipped her arm through Juliet’s and maneuvered her away from the crowded sidewalk.

  “I can’t believe it.” Juliet shook her head. “I just talked to her yesterday. How could she be dead? Shot dead?”

  “What do you know about her?” Shelly asked as they headed down the sidewalk towards home.

  “Emma’s in her early forties. Has two kids, a girl and a boy. One is seventeen, the other is fourteen. She lives at the edge of town.”

  “Is there a husband?” Shelly asked.

  “Yes. Emma talked about him. His name is Charlie. He’s an emergency room nurse at the hospital.” Juliet stopped walking and wheeled to Shelly. “Oh, no. What if he’s at work when they wheel Emma in? I don’t know him well enough to call and tell him what happened.”

  Shelly touched her friend’s arm. “Someone will figure it out. Someone will alert the husband so he knows what happened before they bring his wife in. Will they even bring her to the hospital? If she’s already passed away?”

  “I don’t know.” Juliet shook her head as she started walking again. “What in the world could have caused someone to shoot Emma?”

  “I’d bet Emma probably knew her attacker since she was in her car when she got shot,” Shelly said. “At least, I bet she was in the car when it happened.”

  “So she must have slowed down or pulled over to talk to the person who did it.”

  “She couldn’t have driven far with a gunshot to the chest,” Shelly said. “Either she got shot while sitting in the car or maybe she was standing next to it when it happened.”

  “Why didn’t she call for help?” Juliet asked. “Why did she drive away?”

  “To get away from the person who shot her?” Shelly’s fingers were freezing and she pushed her hands into her pockets.

  “How far do you think Emma could have driven with an injury like that?”

  Shelly shrugged. “I have no idea. It must depend on where the bullet hit her.”

  “Emma was such a nice person, always friendly and cheerful. Why would someone want to kill her?” Juliet wondered.

  The same question was on Shelly’s mind.

  Why, indeed?

  3

  Early the next morning, Shelly, Juliet, and Jay sat around the small table eating eggs and toast in the screened room at the back of Juliet’s cottage. Justice stared out through the screen at a few birds pecking at the grass under a shade tree in the backyard.

  Jay had a late night working the car crash scene in the center of town. Juliet invited her older sister to come for breakfast to talk about the case.

  “You already know that the woman, Emma Pinkley, was an accountant at the resort. She’d lived in this area her whole life.” Jay took a swallow of her coffee. “We spoke with her husband last night … of course, the guy was plenty shook up. He told us Emma left the house in the late afternoon to do some shopping and errands and she was planning to have dinner at her mother’s place over in Linville.”

  “Does anyone know what Emma did after leaving her mother’s house?” Juliet asked.

  Jay said, “We’re going to speak with the mother in an hour. Last night, she said her daughter didn’t stay for dinner as planned. The woman was so distraught over Emma’s death that we weren’t able to talk with her any further.”

  “So Emma cancelled dinner with her mother?” Shelly asked.

  Jay nodded. “That’s what the mother told us.”

  “But did Emma see her mother yesterday?” Shelly asked. “Did she stop by her mom’s house even though she wasn’t going to stay for dinner?”

  “Unknown.” Jay buttered her toast. “We’ll find out the details when we talk to her later this morning.”

  “What about the gunshot wound?” Juliet made a face. “Was it self-inflicted?”

  “Emma’s husband, Charlie, claimed his wife did not own a gun,” Jay said. “The medical examiner will let us know more about the wound … but really? There was no gun found in the car and initial examination did not reveal anything on the woman’s fingers or hands that might point to her turning a gun on herself. Right now, I’m inclined to believe Emma Pinkley was shot by someone other than herself.”

  Justice looked at the women gathered around the table and growled low in her throat.

  “What about the husband?” Shelly questioned. “Was he at work around the time Emma was shot?”

  “He was at work until late afternoon, but not in the evening.”

  “So he’s a possible suspect then.” Juliet sighed.

  Jay turned her piercing blue eyes to Shelly. “Have you had any dreams lately?”

  A shudder went through Shelly’s body and her voice was soft when she answered. “None that seem important.”

  Ever since the fatal car accident, Shelly sometimes had dreams where her sister, Lauren, appeared and seemed to be trying to send her a message. Jay suggested that the dreams were probably Shelly’s subconscious working to point out things she hadn’t paid attention to during the day. Jay thought that Shelly might have a heightened sensitivity to or perception of people and situations and
when her mind was quiet, her subconscious worked on problems or issues and highlighted in her dreams the things she’d overlooked or ignored in the day. Since moving to Paxton Park a few months ago, Shelly’s dreams had pointed to several things that helped solve two recent murder cases.

  “Have you had any dreams where Lauren was in them?” Jay asked gently, knowing that Shelly was bothered by the possibility she might have some special ability that most other people lacked.

  “No.” Shelly shook her head. Despite her negative reply, Lauren had been in several of her dreams recently, but there wasn’t anything odd about them. Shelly and her sister had been enjoying a meal together at a restaurant sitting with some mutual friends. That was all that happened. Nothing seemed important or unusual or troubling about the dreams so Shelly didn’t mention them.

  “Okay.” Jay seemed slightly disappointed.

  Shelly noticed the look on Jay’s face. “I didn’t know Emma Pinkley well. I’d only met her a few times. I don’t know anything about her. My sleeping mind wouldn’t be able to highlight anything I’ve overlooked during the day because my brain doesn’t have any information about the woman.”

  Juliet pointed out, “But you didn’t know the murdered women in those recent cases and you were still able to help.”

  Shelly opened her mouth to protest, but then closed it, not sure how to respond. After pausing for a few seconds, she said, “I heard about those women by talking to other people, by hearing from people who knew them or interacted with them. Somehow I picked up on things that helped.”

  Jay and Juliet exchanged a quick look, and then Jay shifted her gaze to Shelly. “I wonder … if you talk to people who knew Emma, would you pick up on things that the rest of us will likely miss?”

  “Probably not.” Shelly forced a chuckle and attempted a joke. “I’m not a mind reader, you know.”

  “Would you like to sit in on the interview this morning with Emma Pinkley’s mother?” Jay asked.

  Feeling her stomach clench, Shelly said in a small voice, “I’m due at work in an hour.”

  “Could you go in a little later?” Jay looked hopeful.

  Dreading the possibility of getting drawn into the case, Shelly quickly reached for the jar of jam. Her elbow bumped her juice glass and almost knocked it over, but Jay caught it before it spilled.

  “Thanks,” Shelly said.

  “Anytime,” Jay told her, and then added with a wink, “We help each other.”

  Letting out a sigh, Shelly said, “I’ll call Henry at the diner and tell him I won’t be in until later.”

  Emma Pinkley’s mother lived in the next town over from Paxton Park in a neatly-tended ranch house. Nancy Billings, in her late sixties with short layered silver hair and light blue eyes, was about five feet four inches tall and carried a few extra pounds on her petite frame. The whites of her eyes were raw and red from crying and she gripped a mangled tissue in her hand. Her older daughter, Evelyn, sat on the sofa next to her, their shoulders touching.

  Evelyn looked to be in her late forties. She had short blond hair cut in layers around her face and she had her mother’s facial features and light blue eyes. The rims of Evelyn’s eyes were bright pink and she flicked her gaze around the room as if she was looking for something that could anchor her and allow her to escape from her misery.

  Shelly sat next to Jay on a sofa opposite the two women and wished she could run from the room. After introductions and condolences, Jay got down to the questioning.

  “You and Emma had planned to have dinner together?” Jay used a gentle tone of voice.

  Nancy’s hand tightened over the tissue. “We were going to, but Emma asked if I’d mind changing our plans to the next evening.”

  “Why did she change your plans?”

  “She told me she was feeling rushed and still needed to go to the grocery store and do some errands. And, she was giving someone a ride somewhere.”

  “Do you know who she was giving a ride to?”

  “She said a friend. I don’t know who it was though.” Nancy reached over to her older daughter and took her hand.

  “Do you know where they were going?” Jay asked.

  “I’m not sure. Emma said she had to drop the friend off somewhere.”

  “Was the friend a man or a woman?”

  Nancy’s shoulder moved up and down in a shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “So you didn’t see Emma last night?” Jay tried to clarify.

  “I did, but only for a few minutes. She came by and dropped off some take-out food for me. She felt bad about canceling dinner and didn’t want me to have to cook for myself.” Nancy’s face tightened and her lips clamped together to keep from dissolving into tears. “Emma was always so thoughtful.”

  “Do you know if Emma was worried about anything?” Jay questioned.

  Nancy shook her head. “She didn’t tell me anything like that. She seemed normal. Well, there was a man at Windsor Manufacturing that Emma didn’t like. That was the place she worked part-time for a while. He seemed to want to go out with Emma. She said he sent her inappropriate messages, lewd, dirty stuff.”

  Shelly’s eyes widened.

  “Do you know his name?” Jay questioned.

  “Steve. I don’t know his last name.”

  “Did Emma have an argument with anyone recently?”

  Evelyn gave her mother a sideways look. “Emma and her husband occasionally argued. Sometimes, there was trouble between them.”

  “Not lately,” Nancy told them.

  Jay made eye contact with Evelyn. “What sort of trouble?”

  Evelyn said, “Charlie wasn’t good with money. He liked to gamble. A couple of times he ran up some debt, a lot of it. Emma was furious. It caused their relationship some strain.”

  “Had Charlie been in trouble with debt recently?” Jay questioned.

  “Not recently,” Evelyn said. “Not that I know of anyway. The last time was about six months ago.”

  “Were Emma and Charlie considering splitting up?”

  “It crossed Emma’s mind that last time. She was fed up.” Evelyn moved her fingers over her eyes.

  “What state was the marriage in at the present time?” Jay asked.

  Evelyn said, “Emma had lost respect for Charlie. He couldn’t control his gambling. He wouldn’t go for help.”

  “Was divorce in the picture?” Jay asked.

  “I don’t think so. They seemed to have settled into a routine. I think they stayed together for the kids’ sakes. I don’t think Emma would ever forgive Charlie for the mess he made of their finances, but she was pleasant to him when they were together.”

  “Was the gambling the only trouble they had?” Jay looked pointedly at Nancy and Evelyn.

  “You mean did they have affairs? Did they cheat on each other?” Evelyn asked for clarification.

  Jay nodded.

  Nancy said, “Emma wouldn’t engage in that behavior.”

  Jay leaned forward slightly. “So their disagreements were solely about money and gambling?”

  “I think so,” Evelyn said.

  Nancy’s lower lip trembled. “You don’t think Charlie had anything to do with this, do you?”

  Shelly’s heart skipped a beat. Did Emma’s mother have reason to believe Charlie might have the desire to kill Emma?

  “We’re only collecting information,” Jay said with an easy manner. “We don’t have any suspects as yet.” After looking at Nancy for several seconds, Jay asked, “Do you and Charlie get along?”

  Nancy bit her lip and brushed at her eyes before whispering, “I don’t like him.”

  A flash of anxiety raced through Shelly’s veins.

  4

  Later that afternoon, Shelly and Juliet sat in uncomfortable wooden chairs in Jay’s cubbyhole of a windowless office in front of the beat-up desk covered with folders, papers, and a laptop.

  Jay said, “Preliminary information indicates Emma Pinkley was shot in the chest by someone. She did n
ot commit suicide. She was shot while sitting in the driver’s seat of her car. It’s too early for a definitive answer, but an educated guess by the medical examiner tells us that Emma might have been able to drive the car for five, possibly ten minutes, before bleeding out or succumbing to her wound.”

  “That gives us a radius to work with to plot out where Emma could have been when she was shot,” Juliet said.

  “Possibly,” Jay said. “It will narrow it down at least.”

  “Have any witnesses come forward? Did anyone see Emma driving into town?” Shelly asked.

  “Nothing yet,” Jay said while clicking on her mouse and staring at the laptop screen. “Based roughly on what the medical examiner told us about Emma’s ability to drive while shot, I’ve got a map of the area here displaying a ring of possibility where the woman might have been attacked.” Jay gestured for her sister and Shelly to come and have a look.

  The young women hunched down behind Jay and trained their eyes on the map.

  “She could have been in Linville where her mother lives,” Shelly pointed out. “But her mother said Emma told her she was going to Paxton Park to do some errands.”

  “Emma might have been shot before getting back to town after seeing her mother,” Juliet said.

  “Do you know yet who Emma was supposed to be driving somewhere?” Shelly asked.

  “Not yet.” Jay’s gaze was fixed on the map. “Emma wouldn’t have been on the mountain with her car so we can eliminate this whole section that’s in the woods or on the mountain. So that leaves Linville in this direction, Paxton Park in the middle, Rollingwood to the south, and West Rollingwood.” Jay let out a sigh. “It’s a lot of ground to cover.”

  “Do you have a list of Emma’s friends?” Shelly asked. “And their addresses?”

  “Working on it,” Jay said. “We have an officer doing the leg work on that aspect of things. We’ll also ask Emma’s mother, sister, and husband about people Emma was close to and people she was friendly with, but maybe wouldn’t classify as a friend.”

  “She could have been going to meet an associate from work and just used the word ‘friend’ when talking to her mother,” Juliet said.