Killer Colada: a Danger Cove Cocktail Mystery by Sibel Hodge, Elizabeth Ashby Read Free Book Online

hung up and turned to face us. "Well, that was interesting. According to my source in Seattle, Tim Baxtor has told Lester Marshall that he was set up. He said Pandora called him about midday out of the blue and asked him to come round at 3:30 p.m. that day. He hadn't heard from her for years and was reluctant to go there at first, but she said she had evidence about what had really happened to Jenna. So he said against his better judgment he went because he wanted to finally clear his name once and for all. When he got there, she let him in, and they sat in the kitchen. Apparently she was already pretty drunk, and she poured them both a glass of rum. He said he didn't touch his, but she was necking it back like it was tap water. Then instead of telling him she'd found out something, she got really angry, demanding that he tell her where Jenna's body was so she could finally say a proper good-bye."
    "So he killed her to shut her up?" Ruby muttered.
    Vernon shrugged. "He says not. He told Lester that Pandora wouldn't listen to him when he tried to explain he had nothing to do with Jenna's disappearance, so he walked out. He said she was very much alive when he left."
    "Except we saw him leave, and when we got inside, she was dead," Ruby said.
    "It was only a few minutes before we found her," I said. "Five at the most."
    "I think he's lying," Ruby said.
    There were two glasses of rum on the kitchen table—I thought back to the dreadful scene in the kitchen—along with the glass vial of what must've contained the pentobarbital.
    "The toxicology report did say she had a lot of alcohol in her system, so she would've been impaired," Vernon said. "Tim could've overpowered her, grabbed her arm, and intravenously injected her full of the drug. If she was drunk, it would've been easy. He must've been wearing gloves, because the only prints found on the syringe, the plastic wrapper, and the vial were Pandora's, who probably tried to grab them off him when he was trying to kill her. And they didn't find any of his prints inside the house."
    "Did they check the phone records to see if she had called Tim like he claimed?" I asked Vernon.
    "Yeah, there's no such call listed at that time from Pandora's landline, and as far as they know, she didn't have a cell. But…" He held up a finger for emphasis. "There was a two-minute call made to Tim's cell from an unregistered pay-as-you-go phone at the time he stated."
    I let that sink in. Something didn't seem right to me. "But it all sounds too neat, doesn't it?" I chewed on my lip.
    "But who else would've killed her?" Ruby asked. "Who else had a motive or opportunity?"
    "I agree with Hope. Something's not quite adding up." Vernon paced up and down. "If you're going to kill someone, then you want to make sure it doesn't point back to you. The use of pentobarbital and the fact Tim was in that house in broad daylight seems too obvious to me."
    "That's exactly what I thought," I said. "Can't they find out exactly where the call was made from?"
    "There's only one cell tower in Danger Cove. The only thing they can be sure of is that the call to Tim was made from this town," Vernon said.
    "But no one else could've slipped inside the kitchen and done it," Ruby said. "We saw Tim leaving in a big hurry, and five minutes later, we found her body."
    "Unless someone else got in through the back door?" Vernon suggested. "You know the layout of her house. Could anyone gain access through the rear? Could they get in and out unnoticed?"
    Ruby tapped her fingernails on the bar, thinking. "The rear patio door that led into the kitchen was open. And her garden backs onto a secluded wooded area. I guess someone else could've climbed the five-foot fence, then came in and out before we got inside, but that's highly unlikely."
    "What about the son? Ian?" Vernon asked. "By all accounts, Pandora had money from her husband's business. Who stood to inherit from her?"
    "As far as I know, the only surviving relative is Ian.