One Deadly Sister (Sandy Reid Mystery Series #1) (38 page)

Sometimes your friends are more dangerous than enemies.
~

Sandy Reid stumbles over a potential client—shot between the eyes. She believes the murdered woman is asking her to find the killer. How else to explain the mysterious spot of blood Sandy later discovers on her own hand? Then a friend kills himself. Or was it a second murder cleverly disguised as suicide? Now with two people dead, Sandy can’t resist getting involved and is drawn into a plot that stretches out to national ramifications. At the last moment, she discovers her gutsy scheme to entrap the killer is more dangerous than expected and must play out exactly right for her to get out alive. The third book in this fast-paced mystery series.

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Chasing Suspect Three

*****

Four Star Mystery Novel Rating

Clients don't just hire her, they turn her loose.
~

Sandy Reid is back and the assertive young criminal defense attorney finally lands her first big murder case. As she digs in and begins to destroy the state attorney's case, she is convinced her client is lying. Is she rushing to save an innocent woman or helping a killer get away with murder?
She faces a client who seems innocent of shooting her husband until she opens her mouth, the client's mysterious boyfriend who has no past and is unquestionably shady yet doesn't cast a shadow, and the victim's sister whose fashionable façade hides a layer of predatory sex. The sister also happens to be a former girlfriend of Sandy's lover and wants him back in her life. And they all have a reason to lie.
Sandy finds herself questioning her lover's faithfulness at the same time she's deciding whether to go too far with an FBI agent with movie-star looks who won't take no for an answer. Her gutsy search for the killer leads her away from her quiet Florida ocean side town and down to the tropical palms along Biscayne Bay, and the steamy streets of Miami that are dark with something more than the night.
In the end, Sandy discovers that not everything is as it seems. This fast-paced murder mystery is the fourth in the exciting mystery series with Sandy Reid the sassy and irrepressible protagonist.

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Alive after Friday

*****

Some decisions are deadlier than others. ~

Being kidnapped is only the start of Sandy Reid’s problems. When an extortion plot strikes close to home, she’s forced to kiss a world of money goodbye to save her lover. That’s the bad news—there is no good news. The feisty young lawyer ignores the risks and with sidekick Martin she’s off on a gripping whirl around sun-splashed Palm Beach County, Florida; including confronting an sexy stranger who’s easy to brush off until the gun comes out, a cheating wife who gets more action than she can handle and a Barbi Doll beauty who would never jump into bed with just any couple who asks.

Meanwhile, must straight-laced Martin resort to seduction to learn the vital secret of the attractive, unlucky-in-love woman who already has two murdered men in her past?

All this because a pair of shadowy characters make the biggest mistake of their lives when they target Sandy, in this romance-splashed women-sleuths mystery.

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The Price of Candy
excerpt

The second in the Sandy Reid mystery series

B
eyond the solid screen of sea grapes that lined Highway A1A, and down a gentle sea oat covered slope, lay an isolated patch of sandy beach warmed that late afternoon by one of the celebrated southerly breezes that enhance Florida in November. Only the murmur of the ocean disturbed the quietness. On that secluded beach, cast in the slanted shadows of the sunset, were two men and a woman. The two men were alive.

One was a sturdy younger man, scarcely thirty. He wore a
Miami Dolphin’s
sweatshirt and slouched with his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his faded jeans. The other man was dressed precisely for business except fine sand had scattered across his well-shined
Testoni
shoes. He walked away from the body, put both hands to his head and walked back. He took off his tailored suit coat and covered the face and upper body of the woman on her back in the sand. Her orange bikini bottom and bare legs remained exposed below his coat.

The younger man knelt beside the body and started to lift the coat. “She really dead?”

“Don’t move that. Don’t look under there!”

“I’m not looking at
her
. Looking at her body. She’s not in there anymore. Gone, like up in smoke or whatever happens.” He raised the coat and made an unhurried consideration of the body.

“You’re looking at her.”

“Ask her if she cares. Don’t often get a free peek like this, you know. I’ll just close her eyes so she’s not staring back at me.” The younger man passed his hand over her face and the woman’s hushed hazel eyes closed easily.

“How’d you know that?”

“That’s what they do in the movies. Read someplace where some people believe if the eyes are left open, the dead will look around and spot someone to take with them.”

“Keep your hands off her.” The other man reached down and readjusted the coat to cover as much of the face and upper body as possible.

“Who knows what the dead are capable of? This one’s doing a good job messing with your head.”

“Don’t touch her again, okay?”

“Why, she your wife?”

The man shook his head. “I...I think I’m going to be sick.” He pulled the knot of his silk necktie loose, tilted his head back and took in a deep breath.

“Girlfriend, huh? Lucky man...at least up until now. She’s definitely from another world. You rich guys get all the goodies.”

“I don’t think about things in that way.”

“You don’t think about money at all. Like you don’t think about that fancy car parked up there. Just ask for the best or pick what you want. Like you picked which girl you wanted. Of course, now you can’t bear to look at her. Guess you’ll just have to pick another.”

“I don’t need to justify anything to you.”

“Yeah, the rich never have to justify.” He made a wide grin. “Your money won’t help when you try to explain to your wife how you happen to know Miss Universe here and why her top is off. You’re shaking already.”

The other man stiffened. “Her top came off when I put my arms around her from the back, you know, that Heimlich maneuver, squeezing her to stop her choking.” He combed his fingers through his thin brown hair.

“If you say so. When I first looked down you were behind her with your arms around her. I saw her top fall off and her boobs bouncing around. You bet I remember that part.”

“I couldn’t get the damn thing back on.”

“Must’ve been fun trying to stuff ten pounds in a five pound bag.”

“Do you have to talk about her like that? It’s not decent. She deserves our respect. She was a nice girl.”

“You knelt down beside her with your head down for a long time. What was that?”

“Just thinking.”

“Just crying over her is more like it. Okay, I guess you tried to save her. Don’t know how you screwed up the Heimlich. Any dork can do it.”

“I’ve never thought about learning such things. Things where I must actually touch people. There’s always someone around to do it. Of course I regret it. Someone trained might have saved her.”

“You drove here together. I saw you.”

“You saw us? Oh...I didn’t realize that. She’s sort of a friend.” He wiped his palms on the front of his trousers.

“I hope my friends do a better job, if I choke.”

“She needed a ride, that’s all...she needed a ride.”

“A ride to the beach? That what you’re saying?”

The man folded his arms across his chest and didn’t answer.

“I stood up there at the top of that knoll and watched you. Funny, when she got out of your car and started changing into that bikini, it looked like you were trying to peek at her. You’ve never seen your girlfriend naked? She moved to the other side like she didn’t want you to watch her undress. She didn’t notice I had pulled in. I’m the one who got the show.”

“So she was modest. Stop saying things.”

“Modest then, won’t bother her a bit anybody looks at her now.”

“But it bothers me. You shouldn’t speak of her in that manner. It’s not...honorable. Just keep my coat over her.” He folded and unfolded his arms again. “You know I tried to help her. You know I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Relax, it’s an accident. Like you say, she choked herself to death. Crazy way to die.”

The older man said, “My phone’s in the car—.”

“I’ve already phoned the police. Told them send along an ambulance.”

“Oh, you already called them? That’s good...I guess.” He turned away from the body and rubbed the back of his neck. “They’re not going to believe me...they’re not going to believe me.”

“You’re really sweating this, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m shaken. A person just died before my eyes. Her dead body is lying there.”

“I suppose you’ve got big deal friends, a big deal job, a big deal reputation.”

“You don’t know the half of it. You wouldn’t believe the fallout there’s going to be about this.” He tilted his head back and closed his eyes tightly.

“So take off.”

“What?”

“Go...leave. You’ve got nothing to do with this, it happened like you said. She happened to be on the beach. You happened to be on the beach. You tried to help her. That’s the way it was, wasn’t it?”

“I guess.”

“So, go. Get out of here. You don’t have to get involved. I’ll look after her. Things like this happen all the time.”

“I don’t think I should leave her. Should I go? I don’t think I should.”

“No sweat. Nothing else you can do here. Get moving the police will be here any second.”

“Then you’ll be in trouble.”

“No, they know me. I live around here. I take care of some things around here. Nothing bad happened. There’s been no crime. The M.E. will find she died of choking. Case closed.

“The medical examiner?”

“Yeah, like on TV. Now come on we’ll walk up to your car. You leave and I’ll wait up there for the police.”

“I should take my coat.” He reached back and picked it up off the body. He paused to look down at her.
Freddy, you always want things nice and neat
. Good lord, he thought, does it end this way?

“She should have something over her,” he said. “I don’t have a blanket in my car. Do you?”

The younger man shook his head.

They reached the top of the sandy knoll and could now hear the occasional hum of vehicles going by on A1A beyond the screen of foliage. The older man stopped abruptly and pointed. “Is that your SUV parked there? Wait a minute, I saw it at that truck stop up in Jacksonville. You’re lying. You’re not from around here. You pulled out right behind us on 95.”

“Not me, buddy. I’ve been here all day. Haven’t been out of town in a month. Now you should get out of here.”

“I was certain it was your white SUV that followed us.”

“You’re saying you gave Miss Universe a ride down here from Jax so she could go to the beach?”

The nervous man didn’t answer.

“Stop talking and go.”

“I can’t leave. I won’t do it.” He wondered just how much he owed her anyway. He could stay and identify himself to the police. That wouldn’t bring her back and might destroy him. Certainly he didn’t owe her that much. “I don’t know. Will she be okay? Nothing’s going to happen to her?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to her. I’ll keep an eye on her. Now leave.”

“Well, I guess it’s all right, since the police are on the way. I truly appreciate your doing this for me. So, you’ll stay up here and wait up here until they come, okay?”

“Sure.”