Slay Bells and Satchels (Haley Randolph Mystery Series) by Howell Dorothy

Author:Howell, Dorothy [Howell, Dorothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery & Crime
Publisher: Dorothy Howell
Published: 2011-10-29T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Now I had two absolutely-for-sure suspects, and one kind-of suspect.

I went to the Shoe Department stockroom, ignoring customers with ease, and closed the door behind me. I needed time to think about my suspects which, since the murder had happened in Holt’s, technically meant that I was working.

Jasmine was my first suspect. I didn’t want her to be guilty because I liked her. She was trying really hard to live her dream, and had a lot working against her.

But I couldn’t shake the fact that she’d avoided my questions about why she hadn’t showed up to work at Holt’s the day of McKenna’s murder, if she was really so desperate for money. Likewise, she hadn’t told me whether or not she’d actually come to the store that morning.

It seemed like Jasmine had a good reason to want to keep McKenna alive in the hope of finally getting her back-rent. But maybe McKenna had told her she’d never pay her, even after those big fat sitcom paychecks finally rolled in. From what I’d heard about McKenna, she was moving ahead with her life and not looking back.

Trent Daniels also made a good suspect. Yeah, he really loved McKenna, according to everybody who’d talked to him—including Detective Shuman. But if he’d found out she was just using him for a free place to stay and thought she’d dump him as soon as she started collecting her twenty-thousand-dollar paychecks, maybe he’d gotten angry. Maybe he’d snapped—Shuman had said there was something weird about the guy. Plus, according to Sandy, Trent was in the store at the time of McKenna’s murder, disguised in a Santa costume. Showing up this morning, acting all broken-hearted in front of Jeanette, asking to see the stockroom might have been a way to throw suspicion off of himself.

I’d seen the back door to the stockroom open that morning. Jasmine or Trent could have slipped in, murdered McKenna, then left totally unnoticed.

Alyssa ranked kind of in the middle on my personal rate-a-murder-suspect scale. She’d talked trash about McKenna every chance she got, and seemed way interested in Detective Shuman’s investigation—almost too interested. These were sort of lame reasons to consider her a full-on suspect, so I put her in my mental kind-of suspect category.

Of course, a motive would be nice.

I paced around the stockroom, thinking hard, trying to come up with something—jeez, I could really use a Snickers bar right now. A chocolate-coated brain boost couldn’t hurt.

There had to be some reason McKenna had been murdered. Who would want her dead?

Yeah, she’d skipped out on rent, used a guy who probably loved her for a free place to crash, and alienated everybody around her by bragging about her sitcom role. This made her a crappy person, and an even crappier friend and girlfriend. While some people probably wished McKenna were dead, I didn’t see where any of this would cause someone to actually murder her.

I kept coming back to the rent McKenna owed Jasmine. Maybe Shuman was right. Maybe this whole thing was all about money.

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