Cloudy with a Chance of Ghosts (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 4) by J.D. Winters Page A

he’d said. Marilee? The murderer of Keri?  
    Well, why not?
    Yes, but then again, why? Did the police take her in for questioning and get a little too close to some of her secrets? Did she accuse Jagger in order to throw them off? I still couldn’t see her picking up a rock and applying it to Keri’s head. Unless she was very motivated.
    Motive. That was what I still didn’t get. What was her motive?
    But wait. She’d obviously had information on Keri’s attempt to profile the viler side of Carleton, hadn’t she? What was she doing with Keri’s private papers in her house? Hadn’t that ghost girl, Julie Geiger told me Marilee had taken papers from that secret hiding place in the wall? Could those papers have been something to do with Keri’s investigation?  
    It was all so confusing. I was about to go back into the house when a rustling in the hedgerow told me there was someone else out tonight. I gasped and grabbed my pajamas to my chest, but the figure that came out of the shadows was familiar.  
    “Jagger!” I said. “What are you doing here?”
    “Watching you and your boyfriend, it seems.” He grinned at me, looking awfully relaxed for a man who was wanted by the police. “But I had something else in mind when I first got here.”
    I stiffened. After all, this man was a suspect in a murder. Should I be out here talking to him like this? Probably not.  
    “No kidding,” I said a bit breathlessly.  
    “Seriously. I was hoping to see Jill, but she’s asleep, right?”
    “Right.”
    “Don’t wake her.”
    “Don’t worry.”
    “No, really. I guess you know that Marilee accused me of murdering Keri Shorter.”
    “Yes.”
    “I didn’t do it.”
    “Really.”
    “Really.”
    I looked at him nervously, but for the life of me, I couldn’t picture him as a murderer, either. It might be interesting to see who he thought did it.  
      “So Jagger, tell me how you see it all.”
    He gave a snort. “I’m not telling you everything. Only what I think you should know.”
    “Okay. Then I’m going back to bed.” I turned toward the house.  
    “No, wait. Okay. Listen, I’ll tell you what I think I know. But I’m a little shaky on some of it.”
    “Just try.”
    “Okay.” He sighed and leaned against the fence. “Okay. Here’s the deal. Carleton was being blackmailed.”
    My eyes got wide. “You’re kidding.”
    “No. He really was. He confided in me. And I was trying to help him figure out who it was so he could fight back.”
    “You wanted to help Carlton?”
    Jagger frowned at me. “Why does that surprise you? Sure I did. Hey, I love the guy.”
    “Really?”
    He looked totally earnest about it. “Yes, really. He’s done a lot for me.”
    Okay, I could buy that. When you came right down to it, I was pretty sure Carlton had done a lot for most of the artists in his group. “So what was he being blackmailed about?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know the details. Something in his past, obviously. Something he didn’t want coming out.”
    We were both silent for a moment, thinking that over, and I couldn’t help but wonder what Carlton had done that would be so serious he would do almost anything to keep it from the world—and did that “almost anything” include murder? Hmmm.
    “Anyway,” Jagger went on at last, “that was why I took Keri out to dinner the other night. I wanted to shmooze her a bit and try to find out what she was doing.”
    I gasped. “Was she the one blackmailing…..?”
    “No. It wasn’t her. But if she’d actually published the article about Carlton that she was going after, it would not only have messed with Carlton’s life, it would have ruined everything for the blackmailer. Don’t you see? If the truth came out, there would be nothing left for the blackmailer to hold over Carlton to make him fork over the money.”
    “Oh. Sure.”
    “So I figure, the blackmailer is probably who killed Keri. To stop her from publishing the facts that would