Buried Secrets Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mysteries, Book #14 (The Charlie Parker Mysteries) by Connie Shelton

. .” I tilted my head toward the living room. “Your old buddy?”
    “He’s working a cold case that intrigued me. It was very high profile a few years ago,” Ron said as he reached into the cupboard above the fridge for his special bottle of Scotch. “He’ll fill you in on the details, but basically it boils down to his wanting our help with it.”
    I could tell by the gleam in his eyes that he really wanted to do this.
    “But, he comes from Seattle. Why would we be working the case?”
    “Several of his most promising leads brought him here. He’ll have to get back to the northwest in a couple days but he wants someone local to follow up here in New Mexico. What do you think?” He pulled two heavy crystal glasses from another cupboard.
    “I think . . . sure, whatever you want.”
    Ron has so seldom heard those words come from me that he didn’t realize he’d made his case. “It could bring us a real boost in business. This case was huge. That woman, Tali Donovan, who was tried for killing her two kids and then acquitted. The bodies of the children were never found and that’s a lot of what caused the ‘reasonable doubt’ in the verdict.”
    “Ron, I said yes.”
    “Chet’s convinced she was guilty and he’s putting together the evidence.”
    I waved my hand in front of his face. “Earth to Ron. I said yes. We should do it.”
    Aside from all of his reasons, I felt my pulse quicken a little. Wasn’t this the case I’d just seen written up in The Scoop ?
    “Good. We’ll go over it all. He can bring both of us up to speed on it.” He poured Scotch into the two glasses and threw in a few ice cubes.
    “But not right this minute. It’s Christmas.”
    In answer to that statement, a small commotion erupted in the living room. The dog woofed a couple of times and voices came through. I hurried through the swinging door toward the sounds.
    Drake was standing near the front door, trying to shrug off the jacket he wore over his flight suit, while Freckles danced around his legs. My heart thumped just a little harder and I rushed into his arms with a complete lack of self-consciousness.
    “Hey you,” he whispered. “Feels so good to be home.”
    I dittoed that.
    Ron introduced Chet and offered to get Drake a glass of what they were having. He begged off for the moment, wanting to shower off the smell of work and get into more comfortable clothing. When he left the room, the other two men sank into the overstuffed chairs near the fire. Victoria offered to take over in the kitchen. I found myself standing near the sofa without any tasks for the moment.
    “Ron told me about your request for us to work with you,” I said to Flowers, as I took a seat on the couch. “Tell me more about it.”
    “Every retired detective has an unsolved case that bothers him. For me it was Tali Donovan’s two missing kids. That verdict still eats me up.” His vivid blue eyes met mine and I saw the old anguish. “We can go into the details later. I worked the case from day one, when the two children went missing. We always liked Tali Donovan for the crime, but it was hard to put together conclusive evidence. Most of what we had was circumstantial. The prosecutor’s office got in a hurry because the media was all over it and everybody in the country wanted to see this lady hang. Frankly, they took it to trial too soon and couldn’t make their case. Everyone seemed shocked when she was acquitted, but I had a feeling about it. My team members and I weren’t surprised at all.”
    “But what can you do now?” I asked. “Can she be tried again? Double jeopardy and all that?”
    “There’s the possibility of a civil trial, kind of like the Simpson case. Plus, there are other charges that might be brought, even though they won’t carry the severe penalties that a murder one conviction would have.”
    “Ron said you’re retired. So . . . you’re working this on your own?”
    “There’s an interested party. Boyd