Free A Caffeinated Crunch: A Cozy Mystery (Sweet Home Mystery Series Book 2) by Constance Barker Page A

“Jules, please come here.”
     
    I think she could tell by my voice something was wrong as she was at my side within seconds. “What the…”
     
    I took the paper I still held in my hand and placed it next to the jagged edge. Although it was hard to tell from the picture, it looked like a perfect match.
     
    “What are you girls doing back here?”
     
    Both Jules and I jumped as I shoved the paper back into my purse. We turned and Lucille stood in the doorway holding the dress. “I don’t like customers coming back here. I prefer they stay up front.”
     
    “I’m sorry Lucille,” I stammered. “We had wanted to ask you something, right?”
     
    Jules nodded. “Yes…we thought you were back here.”
     
    Lucille began walking toward us. In one hand she held the dress and the other a pair of scissors. Jules moved closer to me as Lucille advanced upon on us.
     
    “What did you put in your purse Lily?” Lucille asked. “I saw you shove something in it when I caught you two back here.”
     
    “It was nothing Lucille.” My heart hammered in my chest and I couldn’t take my eyes off those scissors.
     
    “Girls, don’t lie to me. What’s going on? You’re not stealing from me are you?”
     
    I shook my head. “No Lucille, we would never do that!” I looked at Jules and then pulled the paper out of my purse. Lucille looked at the paper and the picture of the piece of torn cloth. She then looked beyond us on the counter where the torn scarf lay. We watched as Lucille seemed to age before our eyes. She turned and laid the dress down on a table, and to my relief, the scissors as well.
 
    Lucille, looking very weary, sat down in a chair. I could feel my heart starting to slow down, but I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to hear.
     
    Lucille looked down at the floor. “I was going to turn myself in tomorrow morning. I just wanted a few days of normalcy before doing so.”
     
    Jules and I stood stock still as we listened to Lucille’s story. She sighed then looked at us with tired eyes. “I’ve been seeing Carl Jefferies for well on six months. I knew he was married, but he told me his wife was ill and that’s why he couldn’t leave her yet. But that she wasn’t long for this world and soon we’d be together. I, like a fool, believed him. Six months is a while, but I know how some sick people can linger on and I thought that was what was happening in this case. He was such a charmer too, but I guess most con men are.”
     
    My heart went from racing from fear to slowly breaking for these women Jefferies had taken advantage of.
     
    “He’d send me flowers, we’d go on picnics, and sometimes we’d rendouvous out of town. He’d say his wife’s sister was in town to take care of her during those times. Like a fool I believed him, or maybe in the back of mind I knew, but just didn’t care. And then he started asking for money.”
     
    Oh crap, not the money again! “At first it was $50 and $100, and then it became $5000 and $10,000.” Lucille shook her head. “He said he’d been diagnosed with some rare disease, I can’t even remember the name of it, and that he couldn’t afford the medication. He even cried that without it he’d be dead in a year.”
     
    Lucille looked at us. “I believed him. So I kept giving him more and more of my money. All told, it was $100,000.”
     
    “Oh Lucille,” I said. “I’m so sorry he did that to you.”
     
    Lucille shook her head. “I did it to myself. No one held a gun to my head.”
     
    “But you were coming from a place of trying to help someone,” Jules countered. “He was coming from a place of deceit.”
     
    “I know,” Lucille said. “But it doesn’t give me the right to do what I did.”
     
    I steeled myself for what was to come.
     
    “The other day when you two were in the shop I overheard what you said about Mildred. That she had been seeing Carl, and that he took advantage of her as well. That was a shock and I