Marriage and Murder (Cedar Bay Cozy Mystery Book 4) by Dianne Harman

commited suicide, the gun would have been in his hand
and it wasn’t, so I can rule that out.”
    “I would too, but like you
said, there was definitely no gun in his hand.” She opened the oven door and put
the salmon they were going to have for dinner in it.
    “Remember how I said last
night that I was going to contact the local paper and television station and
ask for help?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, the newspaper is
probably just being delivered now, but the television station interviewed me on
their noon broadcast. Part of the interview was how people could get in touch
with me if they had information regarding the murder. This afternoon I got an
anonymous call from a male individual. Usually anyone who calls with
information in a murder case wants to remain anonymous, and this person told me
he’d been driving by the rear of The Crush a little before the approximate time
of the murder. I asked him if he’d noticed anything unusual. He told me he’d
seen someone going into The Crush, but when I asked him if he could tell me if it
was a man or a woman, he said no.”
    “That’s interesting. What
do you make of it?”
    “I don’t know. It could
have just been a customer who saw Jesse going in and thought he was open for
business. On the other hand, it could have been the killer. I asked him if the
person he’d seen was small or large and if there was any kind of physical
description he could give me. He said he wasn’t paying that much attention,
just that he’d noticed someone walking into the store. It doesn’t really give
me much information, but the fact that someone went into the store so close to
the time of the murder might mean something.”
    “Have you established
where the people who are on your list of possible suspects were at the time of
murder?”
    “No. That’s what I’m going
to do tomorrow. By the way, Roxie called me and said to tell you that she’d
locked up and gotten everything ready for tomorrow. I asked her why you hadn’t
locked up, and she said you had an errand you had to run and that you never
returned to the coffee shop after you left today. Is this something I should
know about?” he asked, looking closely at her with an almost suspicious look on
his face.
    “No, not really,” she
said, quickly turning her back on him while she made the salad.
    “Well, since we’re married
I think it would be nice if we trusted each other enough to tell the other one
where we were when one of our business associates had to do something for us
because we weren’t available to do it. Something the spouse had always been
able to do before. Seems to me that would kind of be an important thing to do
in our marriage. What do you think?”
    Lady barked, indicating
she was ready for dinner. Saved by the bark, Kelly thought, sending a
silent thank you to Lady. “Okay, girl, I know it’s dinner time for you and
Rebel. Give me just a minute.”
    As she poured some dog
food into their dog dishes, she heard Mike say “This is Sheriff Mike,” into his
cell phone. Mike listened intently to what was being said. “I appreciate your
call, sir, and if you can think of anything else, please don’t hesitate to call
me again.”
    “What was that all about?”
she asked.
    “The newspaper I told you
about was delivered a little while ago, and the article about Jesse and my call
for help to the community was on the front page. The man who just called said
he was walking by The Crush on his way home from church, and he heard loud
voices coming from inside the store. He said it sounded like people were
arguing, but he couldn’t tell whether it was a man’s voice or a woman’s voice.”
    “That would certainly fit
in with the time frame of the murder. It almost had to be Jesse, but I wonder
who he was arguing with.”
    “If I, and I repeat the
word I, knew, I could probably solve the case. Now back to what we were
discussing before the phone call. I won’t force it, but I would like to know
where you