Rum Cake Murder: A Frosted Love Cozy Mystery - Book 8 (Frosted Love Cozy Mysteries) by Carol Durand, Summer Prescott Read Free Book Online Page B

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    “So, what did you find out about Dr. Aston,” she asked, tearing the end off of a bread stick and dipping it lightly in her salad dressing.
    “I’m fine, thank you, and how was your day,” the detective teased, dark eyes sparkling.
    “Chas! You promised that you’d tell me about what you found out at dinner,” Missy reminded him. “This…” she said gesturing to the delicious meal in front of them, “…is dinner. Now tell me what you found out!”
    Still grinning, Beckett ate a forkful of lasagna, chewed, swallowed, and took a sip of wine before responding, enjoying her impatience. “Okay, okay,” he raised his hands in surrender, then turned serious. “When I tried to look into Aston’s history, I came up with nearly nothing. It was as though he didn’t exist prior to about five years ago, so I looked outside the area for what I could find, and some very interesting things came up.”
    “Like what?” she prompted, sipping her wine.
    “Like, his track record for patients dying is very strange. He typically loses two to three a year, and they almost always die the same way, no matter what symptoms they had to begin with,” he explained.
    “What do you mean?” Missy was mystified.
    “Whether they came in for an injury, or an illness, they all followed the same pattern prior to their death. They’d slip into a coma that would last for a couple of weeks, then die of an embolism.”
    “Wow, that’s a strange coincidence,” Missy frowned.
    “It seems that a medical board in Illinois thought so too. They did a formal investigation of Aston, but never found enough evidence to charge him with anything, so they advised him that he could either resign his position or be fired, and that’s how he ended up in Louisiana. Once he got here, the pattern decreased, but one of the deaths makes me really suspicious,” Chas said, lips pursed in thought.
    “Suspicious…why?”
    “Because it was Cheryl’s mother.”
    Missy’s mouth dropped open. “What? Are you serious?”
    “Deadly serious, but that’s not even the most interesting part. Aston was one of the loudest voices calling for Stanley Conner, Cheryl’s stepfather, to be prosecuted for the crime.”
    “Hmm…deflecting attention from himself maybe?” she asked.
    “That’s what I’m thinking. There was also a time a few years ago where his own wife mysteriously slipped into a coma, but came out of it a couple of weeks later,” he added.
    “And when you consider that we saw her with another man at lunch today, it makes it entirely possible that she may have been about to become his next victim,” Missy’s eyes widened.
    Chas nodded. “This is all speculation at this point, but I’m definitely going to be doing more digging to see what I can find out about Dr. Aston. It’s a general rule of thumb that you don’t investigate doctors when there’s a murder, because they’ve essentially spent their entire lives trying to maintain and extend life rather than ending it, but at the end of the day, they’re just people too – people who could succumb to evil impulses.”
    Missy shuddered. “Chas, Ben is in a coma, and is in the care of Dr. Aston…what if he’s next?”
    “Let’s not jump to any conclusions. While the evidence that I’ve found seems to point to Dr. Aston, we have to remember that every time someone was suspicious about him, there was never enough evidence to even charge him. It could be merely a series of bizarre coincidences,” he shrugged.
    “But I really don’t want to gamble on that with Ben’s life,” she exclaimed. “Can’t we petition the hospital to get Ben a different doctor because his current one is in the process of suing him?” she pleaded.
    “I’ll see what I can do,” Beckett nodded. “And in the meantime, I hate to say it, but if Aston didn’t kill Stanley Conner, it looks like Cheryl did.”
    “But if Cheryl killed her stepfather, then who tried to kill Ben by cutting his brake