Hope Hadley 11-Book Cozy Mystery Set by Meredith Potts

Author:Meredith Potts [Potts, Meredith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-02-08T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Joe wasn’t happy with me, but he also wasn’t going to stop me from seeing Mark. A deputy led me into the cell block where Mark was being held. It was so drab and depressing. The kind of place that could kill a man’s spirit. And that was just the block itself.

His fellow inmates only added to the dour atmosphere. When we reached Mark’s cell, his eyes were shut tight. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was praying or if he couldn’t bear to look at the cell block any longer.

While he was sitting down, I almost forgot that he was over six feet tall. When he was upright, he was a towering man, long and lean, like the high school volleyball player he’d been forty years before. He was in his late fifties now but had taken such good care of his body that, from behind, he could easily pass for early forties if he wanted to. While his frame was still in tip-top shape, the same could not be said for his face.

Time and tragedy had taken a big recent toll on him. The emergence of stress lines on his face had become quite numerous since his daughter’s murder a year ago. That wasn’t all. He used to have a dynamite smile, which he flashed constantly. Not surprisingly, I hadn’t seen it since his daughter’s passing, nor probably would I ever again. It had most likely died with Sadie.

I stopped in front of his cell, but he didn’t open his eyes. It couldn’t have been because he didn’t hear me. My shoes made a very distinct sound as I walked on the concrete. Maybe he didn’t care who it was because he didn’t want to see anyone right now. There was only one way to find out.

“Mark, it doesn’t even seem real seeing you like this,” I said.

Recognizing my voice, he opened his eyes. He looked wildly surprised to see me.

“Hope, what are you doing here?” Mark asked.

It was far from a warm greeting. Then again, how warm could a man truly be when trapped in a five-by-seven-foot jail cell? At the same time, I figured that with his only company being the other inmates on the cell block, that he’d be happy to see a familiar face like mine. That was not the case. If anything, he looked like he wanted to shoo me away.

“I heard the news that you’d turned yourself in, and I couldn’t believe it,” I said.

“Well, believe it now, because it’s the truth.”

Mark said the words, but there was no conviction behind them. He looked like he was just reluctantly going through the motions. If this was a scene in one of the many acting classes I’d taken over the years, the teacher would have called him out for not delivering a believable performance.

Since this wasn’t just some class, I was the one to question him. “Do you really expect me to believe that you killed Walter Clayton?”

“Yes.”

He couldn’t even pull off making that one-word answer sound believable.

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