Creamsicle Murder: A Frosted Love Cozy Mystery - Book 11 (Frosted Love Cozy Mysteries) by Carol Durand, Summer Prescott Read Free Book Online Page A

definitely. He’s way above my pay grade. So he comes in
and tells me I’m working way too hard, and he actually orders me to go take a
break. I tried to push back, because I know that I’d catch hell, s’cuse my
language, when the PM came back, if I even thought about leaving the props
room, but Buckman wasn’t having it, so I took a ten minute break and when I
came back, Buckman was gone.”
    The
door behind Sebastian opened. “Five minutes,” the policewoman who had brought
him in warned. He nodded at her and waited until the door was closed again to
continue.
    “That
left the props room unattended, I don’t know for how long,” he admitted,
seeming embarrassed.
    “Did
you tell that to the police?” Missy asked, feeling a glimmer of hope.
    “No
way,” he shook his head vehemently. “I’d never get hired for another production
ever again if it got out that I had made a rookie mistake like that.”
    “But
it wasn’t your fault – Buckman ordered you to do it, right?”
    “Yeah,
I guess. But if I told the police that, and they went after him and he didn’t
do it, I’d really be screwed, pardon my language,” Sebastian worried.
    “Sebastian,”
Missy put her face through the bars. “If Buckman did it, you have the chance to
catch a killer, and if it wasn’t him, then he may be the only person who can
identify the real killer,” she insisted urgently, needing to get her point
across before their time together ran out.
    “Yeah,
maybe,” he shrugged, uncertain and still uncomfortable.
    “Sebastian,
please. My freedom is at stake here and I’m innocent. You have to tell the
truth, it’s important,” she implored.
    “Uh…well,
I…” he floundered.
    “Time’s
up!” the guard announced, holding the door open for Sebastian to leave.
    “Tell
them Sebastian, please!!!” Missy called after him, slumping against the bars
when he left.

Chapter 14
    Echo
held Missy’s hand through the bars, tears streaming down her face. Seeing her
sweet, innocent friend locked up like a dangerous animal was almost more than
she could bear, but she came with potentially good news.
    “So,
Joe, you know, the reporter that I’m seeing, he went to the movie site to try
to see what he could find out, because I told him what you had told me and he
agreed that the whole thing sounded pretty darn fishy. Anyway, he met one of
the security guards and struck up a conversation. Apparently, part of the
evidence that they have that points to you as the murderer, is a check-in sheet
that shows you arriving just before the murder, and leaving just after,” she
said, speaking in low tones.
    “But
that’s impossible,” Missy exclaimed. “When I left that afternoon, I never
returned that night!”
    “Yup,
I know. Joe got the guard to confess that Buckman, the director dude, had come
by that night and demanded to see the check-in list. When the security guy gave
him the list, he turned his back like he was just looking at it, but the guard
could tell that he was making marks on the sheet. He gave the clipboard back to
the guard and said that if he told anyone that he’d asked to see the list, he’d
never work in Hollywood again,” Echo explained.
    “So,
Buckman put the check marks by my name, making it look like I’d come in when I
wasn’t even there,” Missy deduced. “But why would the security guard tell Joe
all of this and not the police?”
    “Well,
at first, he was scared of losing his job, but when he found out that Joe
wasn’t a policeman, he opened right up,” her friend smiled.
    “Why
would Buckman kill his leading man though, that makes no sense?” Missy was
baffled.
    “Actually,
it makes more sense than you think,” Echo raised her eyebrows knowingly.
“Buckman was in love with Ivana, and the way that she was guaranteed to get a
major role in every one of his films was to string him along with promises that
whenever she and Ian broke up for good, she’d be all his.”
    Missy
gasped. “Buckman