Cadbury Creme Murder
Read Cadbury Creme Murder Online
Authors: Susan Gillard
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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction.
Names,
characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of
the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright
2016 by
Guardian
Publishing Group
- All
rights reserved.
All rights Reserved. No part of this publication
or the information in it may be quoted from or reproduced in any form by means
such as printing, scanning, photocopying or otherwise without prior written
permission of the copyright holder.
Table of Contents
“Wow,”
Heather said in a hushed voice. Standing on her front porch, she surveyed a sodden
lawn littered with leaves and branches that, until very recently, had belonged
to the huge oak that spread its branches overhead.
One
particularly large branch rested on her roof, attached to the trunk of the tree
by mere splinters. Stepping over to the edge of the porch, her friend Amy
glanced up at it. “You’re going to have to have your roof checked,” she said.
“And that branch cut off.”
Heather
nodded. Walking slowly down the front sidewalk, she saw a few of her neighbors
doing the same thing in their own yards. Now that the tornado had passed,
everyone had come out to assess the damage.
Most
of the yards on the block looked like hers—littered with branches and leaves,
but no real damage done. Thank God for that, at least.
“Everybody
okay at your place?” her next door neighbor, Harold Jackson, called to her.
“We’re
fine,” she called back. “Rode out the storm in my hall closet. You guys
okay?”
“We’re
all right. Me and my wife got in the tub and just sat there hoping the roof
didn’t crash in on us. Guess it didn’t. We’re thankful for that.”
“Could
have been a lot worse,” she said.
“Yep.
That, it could have. Well, glad everything’s okay over there. You let me know
if you need any help cleaning up.”
“Will
do,” she said. “And thanks.”
Jackson
raised a hand in a friendly wave and turned back to surveying his own property.
“Doesn’t
look too bad out here,” Heather said to Amy. “Let’s check the back yard.”
As
they passed through the house on the way to the back door, Dave, her little,
fluffy white mixed-breed dog, scampered around their feet anxiously. “You know
something’s wrong, don’t you?” she asked. “But it’s okay now. Everything’s
okay.”
Dave
followed them to the back yard and came outside with them as Heather took
inventory of what had been damaged. Fortunately, there didn’t appear to be any
major damage—just leaves and branches everywhere, and one dent on the hood of
her car where something must have fallen on it and then slid to the ground.
She
circled the car, checking for further damage, but there wasn’t any. “Looks
like you got off pretty light,” Amy said. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to run
home and see how everything looks at my place.”
“Go,”
Heather said. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“That’s
okay. I’ll call you if I need you.”
When
Amy had backed her car out of the driveway, Heather went back inside to grab a
couple of trash bags. Might as well start cleaning up.
She
spent the next hour going through both the front and the back yard to pick up
larger pieces of debris, then going back through both with a rake to gather the
leaves into piles. Once she had stuffed armloads of them into the bags, tied
the bags shut, and lined them up beside her garage until the City of Hillside
got around to deciding when storm pickup would be, she went back inside,
flopped down on the couch, and patted the cushion next to her.
Dave
jumped up beside her, snuggled next to her leg, then rolled over, showing her
his belly and begging for her to scratch it. Which she did, until her cell
phone rang a few seconds later.
She
jumped to her feet—“Sorry, Dave!”—listened for the direction the sound was
coming from, and found the device on her kitchen counter.
Ryan Shepherd
,
the screen read. She smiled and slid her thumb across the screen to accept the
call. “Hey there.”
“Are
you okay?” he asked.
“I’m
fine. There’s one branch from the tree in my front yard that is resting on the
roof, but other than that, no significant damage.”
“Good.
I tried to call you an hour ago, but you didn’t answer.”
“Sorry.
I was outside cleaning up my yard. I guess I forgot to take my phone out with
me.”
“As
long as you’re okay,” he said.
“I’m
fine. Amy was here with me, so we hid in the closet together. She went home
to check out the damage at her place.”
“Looks
like most of Hillside got off pretty light,” he said.
“Have
you been out looking around?”
“No.
I’ve been listening to the radio,” he said, referring to his police radio.
“Not too many calls.”
“That’s
good,” she said. “At least, hopefully, no one was out murdering anybody in the
storm, so maybe you won’t get called out.”
Ryan
was a detective on the Hillside Police Department. Their first date had been a
little over two months ago, and they’d seen each other several times since
then. Their relationship was moving slowly, but she was okay with that. Ryan
was a widower, and she didn’t want to rush him into anything if he wasn’t
ready. She had been married for 5 years, then divorced. If she ever got into
a serious relationship again, she wanted to make sure it was with the right
person this time.
“Yeah,
hopefully not,” he said. “So do you—” He paused, and she could hear radio
chatter in the background.
“I
may have spoken too soon,” he said suddenly. “I’ll call you back.” Then he
was gone.
She
sighed. That was the problem with dating a police detective. You never knew
when duty might call.
Oh,
well. He was worth it.
***
She
checked her text messages and found one from Amy that read,
Everything’s ok.
Yard’s a mess. No major damage.
She
texted back,
Good.
Then she flipped on the TV to one of the major
networks to see if whatever call Ryan had just gotten was on the news. It
wasn’t—not yet, at least—so she went to the kitchen to scrounge around in the
fridge and see what she could find for supper.
Supper
wound up being a salad. She put the last of a tub of lettuce into a large
bowl, added some olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette, and tossed it all
together. A few croutons and some sunflower seeds gave the salad some crunch.
She
ate it as she sat on the couch watching TV, but there was nothing about Ryan’s
call. Just as she forked the last bite of salad into her mouth, her phone
rang, and the screen showed his name. “Hello?” she mumbled around a mouthful
of lettuce.
“Heather,
you’re not going to like this,” he said.
Sometimes,
his way of getting right to the point was endearing. Other times, like now, it
made the bottom drop out of her stomach. “What happened?” she asked.
“There
was one fatality due to the storm. It’s Verna Dixon.”
“Verna
Dixon? Isn’t she the lady who lives out on the edge of town? Who serves on
the library board and works at the hospital and serves on about a thousand
committees?”
“Yes,
that Verna.”
“That’s
a shame. What happened to her?”
“She
was found halfway between her home and the chicken coop she had out back.
Apparently a piece of wood from the chicken coop was torn off by the wind. It
caught Verna in the chest. Straight in.”
“Oh,
no,” Heather sighed. “That’s too bad. Poor Verna.”
“I’m
on my way out there right now. Told patrol not to touch anything until I get
there.”
“Why?
If her death was due to the storm, I mean.”
“I
just want to make sure.”
“Well,
either way, it’s sad,” she said. “I’m going to miss Verna. I didn’t know her
very well, but I had met her and talked with her several times. She was always
friendly.”
“I’ll
let you know what I find out.”
***
As
Heather was brushing her teeth before bed, having already slipped into a cotton
t-shirt-and-capris pajama set, she heard the notification tone from her phone
indicating that she had received a text.
She
rinsed her mouth and spit, then rinsed out her toothbrush until every last
speck of toothpaste had been washed down the drain. Placing the toothbrush
back in its holder, she let her long, curly red hair out of the clip she’d used
to keep it out of the way while she washed her face, turned out the bathroom
light, and went into her bedroom.
Sitting
down on the edge of the bed, she checked the message. It was from Ryan.
Patrol
officer thought it was a hole made from the piece of wood. It was a bullet
hole.
Heather
frowned. Something didn’t make sense.
What?
she texted back.
Thirty
seconds later, her phone pinged again.
Piece of wood stuck in a hole in
Verna Dixon’s chest. It was a bullet hole.
Slowly,
Heather’s mouth dropped open.
So somebody shot her, then stuck a piece of
wood in the hole???
Sick
people in this world
,
he texted back.
Try to get some sleep.
Yeah,
right
, she thought as
she laid the phone on her nightstand and slipped beneath the covers.
Like
I’m going to sleep now
.
She
lay awake wondering not only why in the world someone would shoot Verna Dixon,
but why presumably the same person would then place a small stick of wood into
the bullet hole.
Maybe
to make it look like Verna was killed by flying debris. But wouldn’t the
person—the
killer
—realize that it would be obvious that the piece of
wood hadn’t made the hole?
When
she finally fell asleep, her dreams were in black and white. A tornado swirled
around Verna’s little house. As Verna struggled frantically to shut the
window, a piece of the shutter broke off and lodged itself in her chest. Verna
fell back onto the bed, unable to move. “Help me!” she whispered, her eyes
pleading as she looked straight into Heather’s eyes. “I’ve been shot!”
But
Heather couldn’t move. She could only watch helplessly as Verna’s eyes closed
and her head lolled to the side.
