Free Dearly Depotted by Kate Collins

do if this were your case.”
    An armchair detective game. I could handle that. “If this were my case,” I said, enjoying the mental exercise, “the first item of business would be to find out why Jack returned to the banquet center.”
    “Jack Snyder—what a loser,” Jillian said as Claymore joined us. “He always was the bad acorn of that family. Wasn’t his brother Rick in school with you, Abs? Now he was a real brainiac. Oh, sorry. You probably didn’t know him.”
    What would it take, I wondered, to collapse her chair? A little nudge with the toe of my shoe? “I knew Rick, Jillian. And the expression is bad apple, not acorn.”
    “Not in Jack’s case. He was definitely a member of the nut family. Who else would be crazy enough to fool around with Uncle Josiah’s daughter, and then refuse to acknowledge his own kid or pay child support? Who else would get out of jail and immediately take up with a woman old enough to be his mother? God only knows what Melanie saw in Jack, unless she was hoping to escape the clutches of her father. Now she and the baby are stuck living with that maniac. I can’t imagine how she stands it.”
    “Perhaps she has nowhere else to go,” Claymore suggested.
    “Well, it’s her fault for falling for Jack.” Jillian gave an indignant huff. “I could just kill Jack for ruining my reception.” She caught Claymore’s appalled look and said,
    “Well, I could.”
    “So who would your suspect be, Abby?” Claymore asked, clearly embarrassed by his new wife’s lack of sensitivity.
    “That’s a no-brainer,” Jillian said, rolling her eyes as though she couldn’t believe the man she had married could be so dense. “Uncle Josiah.”
    “I was asking Abby,” Claymore said coolly.
    “I knew that,” she retorted.
    Fearing I would be caught in their crossfire, I said quickly, “Josiah had a motive. Plus he left the reception before Jack’s body was found, so he had the opportunity.”
    “It had to be Uncle Josiah,” Jillian said. “He hated Jack with a passion.”
    “Hating Jack is one thing,” Claymore said; “killing him is another. Josiah isn’t a stupid man. He had to realize that murdering Jack would be counterproductive to his daughter getting any support money. What he should have done was to have Melanie go after Jack in the courts.”
    “Don’t think she hasn’t tried,” Jillian said. “The first time Jack left town and the second time he went to prison. How do you make a prison inmate pay support?”
    “Why doesn’t Melanie move out?” I asked.
    “She doesn’t have a college degree or any skills other than cooking and cleaning, so what can she earn, maybe ten bucks an hour? Where can she live on that income and pay for child care?”
    “There’s your second suspect,” Claymore said. “Melanie. She certainly had a motive—and the opportunity.”
    “I don’t know Melanie very well,” I said, “but she doesn’t seem like the killer type. A lot of women get dumped. They don’t commit murder because of it.”
    “ You didn’t,” Jillian pointed out, in case I’d forgotten what Pryce had done. “Maybe living with her crazy father drove Melanie over the edge. It might have been a crime of passion. She saw Jack in the gazebo and pleaded with him to pay child support. He laughed in her face— hahahahaha —and she clobbered him.”
    I grabbed her hand before she could demonstrate on Claymore’s head. “What was her weapon? The gouge on Jack’s forehead was deep.”
    “Did you get a look at those combat boots she had on?” Jillian rolled her eyes. “Have you ever seen a chunkier heel? Where are the fashion police when you need them?”
    “But why was Jack in the gazebo?” I put to them. “In my opinion, this whole case rests on Jack’s purpose for coming back. Was it for revenge, or was he supposed to meet someone there? What about your friend Vince Vogel?” I asked Claymore. “Pryce mentioned that he had a long-standing feud with