Free Barnyard Murder: A Cozy Mystery (Strawberry Shores Mystery Book 2) by Mak K. Han

at four. We got to playing pool, and I was asking him how he'd been. I told him he seemed stressed. He told me not to worry about it. We were shooting pool and making small talk, and I made an off-hand comment about the murder. That was the first time he dodged the topic. He said he was at home. I changed the subject and he mentioned that his car had broken down a couple of nights before. I asked when, and he said Thursday night. That was the night Jeannie was murdered. So where was he? At home, or out with a broken-down car?” George shook his head. “Something didn't add up.”
    George was right. Something didn't add up. Everything he'd just said had caused the static to go off.
    Everything.
    I thought back to what I'd said to him: 'tell me exactly what happened at the bar'. Could there be a miscommunication there? We both knew I was referring to the Pelican, and that I was asking about what had happened around four when he was there.
    The static, therefore, seemed to mean that either George was lying about what happened, or he was lying about being there at all.
    “You really loved Jeannie, didn't you?” I asked him.
    George nodded. “I did.”
    The static went off. I realized that the previous day as we were collecting the radio at the CBSS meeting—when the static had gone off—it hadn't just been triggered by George saying 'I'll make sure the right person goes to jail'; it had also been triggered by him saying 'I loved her'.
    I looked at him in the rear view. “So tell me more about this secret CBSS meeting,” I said.
    “It's a ways ahead. I'll tell you when we're near. Keeping going straight.”
    He was taking us along Route 28, and Route 28 lead out of Strawberry Shores.
    I took a deep breath. “There is no secret CBSS meeting, is there George?” I asked.
    “Sure there is.”
    Static.
    “You didn't love Jeannie, did you?”
    “Yes I did.”
    Static.
    “You killed Jeannie, didn't you?”
    George hesitated.
    “You were telling the truth the other day. Your parents did go home after the town meeting. But you went home separately. You stopped by the construction site and gave Jeannie the poisoned water.”
    George rubbed his head. “No, that's not true...”
    “Yes it is,” I said. “You killed Jeannie because she was interfering with your dad's project. You're going to inherit the business when he retires, right? So you want him to make as much money as possible so you'll inherit as much as possible. Jeannie was clogging up the works so you killed her.”
    I felt something at my side. Looking down, I saw it was a knife. George had leaned forward and put it against me. Alex and Emily stared at me, wide-eyed.
    “I liked her,” George said. “I tried to get on her good side that night at the Pelican. But she wouldn't have it. Then she started interfering with dad's project. I just kept saying I loved her so nobody would suspect me. How did you figure it out?”
    “Just a hunch,” I said quickly. “Dana was wrong when I talked to her at the CBSS meeting. Kevin didn't come back on Thursday; he came back on Friday. He said it the first morning your dad tried to tear down the tree. He and Dana were handing out petitions and he said he'd help her once he got back on Friday. Kevin Drake was out of town the night Jeannie was killed. There's no way you were telling the truth about what happened at the bar. He would have told you he was in Dallas and seeing as he could prove it; he wouldn't be a suspect. But you knew that though, didn't you?”
    “I knew it was you who solved the Daniel Berkshire case,” he said. “I knew you were a threat. Then you started poking around. Well, I'm going to finish what Daniel started. Keep driving. You three are about to skip town. They're never going to find you, but everyone will assume that because you left, you were guilty.”
    “Laura?” Emily asked quietly from the passenger seat.
    “Yeah?”
    “We're getting kidnapped again, aren't we?”
    I sighed. “Yeah,