Strawberry Murder: A Frosted Love Cozy Mystery - Book 13 (Frosted Love Cozy Mysteries) by Carol Durand, Summer Prescott Read Free Book Online

rubbed his forehead.
    “You
look like you could use a good night’s sleep,” Cortland observed.
    “Nahhh…just
a couple of cans of cola – it’s what’s been getting me through the late nights
for the last couple of weeks, no reason to quit now.”
    “Well,
come with me. I’ll hook you up with a couple of colas and a computer and you
can do whatever you need to do,” Bernard offered, heading for the door. Beckett
followed, so tired he could hardly think.
    “Thanks,
it’s going to be a long night.”
     

Chapter 15
    Echo
looked pale and thin in the baggy orange coverall that she wore, but brightened
immediately when Chas walked into the interrogation room.
    “Chas!
Oh my gosh, it’s so good to see a familiar face. Are you here to take me back
to Louisiana?” she asked as he sat down across from her.
    “Not
yet,” he answered quietly.
    Seeing
the look on his face, Echo knew immediately that something more than her arrest
had gone terribly wrong. “Chas, what is it? What’s going on?” she asked, eyes
wide with fear.
    Beckett
drilled her with a glance. “When you and your criminal boyfriend disappeared, Missy
was worried and went looking for you. She found your spare key, went in the
house to look for you and hasn’t been seen since. There were blood spots on
your bedroom rug and on your back porch,” he told her gravely, with more than a
trace of accusation.
    “Oh
no! Oh gosh, I feel awful. Poor Missy – we have to find her,” Echo exclaimed.
    “That’s
what I’ve been trying to do ever since she disappeared. I was hoping that
Capetti had taken her, so that when we found him we’d find Missy. Now I have
absolutely no idea where to even start looking.”
    “What
can I do to help?” Echo asked, worried.
    “You
have your own troubles to worry about, I’m afraid,” Chas frowned, flipped
through the papers in her file. “Frank Capetti has a rap sheet a mile long, and
because you left the state with him when a warrant had been issued for his
arrest as a murder suspect, you’ve been charged with assisting a fugitive.”
    “But
I had no idea,” she protested, looking scared. “Frank just came over, told me
that I needed to withdraw some money and that we were going to go on the
vacation that we’d been talking about because he needed a break.”
    “Didn’t
it strike you as odd that a man who had just accepted a second job suddenly
needed a break?” Chas raised his eyebrows.
    Echo
blushed and looked down at her hands. “I thought he was just saying that so
that I would agree to drop everything and go on a romantic adventure with him,”
she admitted. “I was so blind…”
    “It
happens,” the detective said. “Capetti is pretty skilled at wooing women into
doing what he wants and then hurting them.”
    “I
found that out the hard way,” she replied, tears filling her eyes. “So who did
he kill?”
    “A
cameraman that had been working on the show. His name was Brad Parker.”
    She
thought for a moment. “Oh, I think I remember him. Nice guy. How awful,” she
shook her head. “But why would Frank kill him?”
    “There
were witnesses who saw the two of them get into a mild argument about you on
the day that he was killed, and later that evening, a witness placed Frank at
the crime scene.”
    Echo
frowned, remembering. “Yeah, Missy told me about that, but wait…Frank couldn’t
have killed the cameraman,” she looked at Chas wide-eyed.
    “Why
not?” the detective demanded, leaning forward.
    “Because
when Frank left the cupcake store, he made his deliveries, then came straight
over to my house and was…occupied for the rest of the evening. He couldn’t have
been at the crime scene that night,” she explained, embarrassed.
    “Then
why would a witness have come forward to place him at the scene?” Chas asked,
trying not to sound suspicious.
    “I
have no idea. Maybe he had a grudge of some sort against Frank,” she shrugged,
honestly baffled. “Who was the