Free Green Velvet Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 16 by Susan Gillard Page B

– then led him back into the depths of Tiny
Belushi’s home.
    Heather slammed the trunk of
Lavender’s Kia, then traipsed onto the sidewalk and toward the stark Belushi
house. Enough was enough. She needed a donut and a choc milkshake after all of
this.
    “The work isn’t over yet,” she said,
to herself. She still had to find the real evidence, which would bring down
Tiny.
    Heather’s lips curled back. The man
had killed his mother. What could’ve possessed him to do that?
    “Hey, are you coming?” Amy yelled.
    “Yeah, yeah, hold your horses.”
    “I can’t,” Amy replied. “I’m holding
Dave.”
    Heather stomped down the path and into
the cool, darkness of Tiny’s house.

Chapter 19
    “What is it?” Heather asked, and
strode into the living room.
    Lavender and Amy stood in the kitchen
area of the room, their eager expressions reflected in the shining, silver
fridge. Lavender grasped a phone between her fingertips and Amy leaned against
her shoulder, gaze flitting across the screen.
    “Tiny’s phone?” Heather hurried to
Amy’s side.
    The harsh fluorescent tubes
illuminated their square of the kitchen, and the screen too.
    “Go back to the other one,” Amy said.
    Lavender tapped the screen, then
opened a message and directed the screen toward Heather. “Read it.”
    “No need for weeping. The evidence is
here, Heather,” Amy said.
    Heather bent her head over the phone
and read the text.
    I’ve had enough. I know you’ve been robbing
some of the places around town, son. I won’t stand for it. We left Dallas
because of you, and I won’t let you bring us down again. It’s over.
    “Wow. So, Tiny was the one who forced
them to leave,” Heather whispered. “He was a fugitive. On the run from the law
because of his priors.”
    “Yep, yep, yep,” Amy said, then
reached across Lavender and tapped her finger on the screen. “Look at this
one.”
    No, Tim. You’ve gone too far this
time. I won’t let you hurt people like this. Not your family. I’m going to
speak to my lawyer tomorrow. You’re out of my will.
    “Wait, why would Tiny kill his mom
after she’d removed him from her will?” Heather asked. “That doesn’t make
sense.”
    “Unless, he wanted revenge,” Amy
replied. She bent, then let Dave off the leash. He sniffed around in the
kitchen and scratched at the tiles.
    “Revenge? Maybe.” Heather scratched
her chin. “Or maybe, just maybe, he didn’t think she’d changed it yet. He
probably wanted to get rid of her before she did it, then benefit from the
payoff.”
    “I dunno,” Lavender said. “That
doesn’t make sense to me.”
    Heather and Amy froze and looked at
the young woman. Heather chuckled. “I almost forgot you were there, Lavender.
Why do you think he did it?”
    They were past the point of ‘who did
it’ and onto ‘why’.
    Lavender straightened her modest
t-shirt, then narrowed her eyes at the screen of Tiny’s fancy smartphone.
“Because of the way he killed her. He didn’t try to make it look like an
accident. He choked her on a sweet ball.”
    “You’re right,” Heather said. “Of
course, you’re right. He also used your velvet shirt to try to frame you for
the murder.”
    “What if,” Amy said, and clicked her
fingers three times in a row. “What if he went to meet his mom with the thought
of killing her in his mind? Maybe he wanted her to eat the fudge balls and go
into shock or something. And then when he was there, she revealed that she’d
already changed the will? He got angry and, well, you guys know the rest.”
    Heather nodded. “That’s another
theory. Look, this is all speculation. We can’t be certain about anything at
this point, except that Tiny killed Bernie Belushi in cold blood.”
    “Cold sugar,” Amy replied.
    Dave whined and scratched at a bottom
cupboard at the other end of the kitchen. He sniffed it, then scrabbled his paws
against it.
    “Dave? What’s wrong?” Heather asked.
    Her doggy dearest ignored her