Free Rear-View Murder: A Gemma Stone Cozy Mystery by Willow Monroe

open at the neck with a dozen gold chains clearly visible in the gloom. Rings glittered across his knuckles. He was smoking, very casually, standing with one foot crossed over the other. And, to Gemma’s eye at least, he looked like pure evil.
    “That’s why Sadie was too scared to talk any longer,” Gemma said. “I’ll bet that’s our culprit right there.”
    “Culprit or not, we’re not going to confront him alone,” Holly said, rolling slowly away from the area.
    In the mirror, Gemma watched him step out of the alley and then enter the door where Sadie had been standing. She closed her eyes and sent up a little wish for Sadie’s safety.
    “Shouldn’t we call the cops?” Gemma asked.
    “What? And tell them that a man went into a building?” Holly said.
    “Why are you always so logical?” Gemma huffed and sank back into the leather seats, suddenly exhausted. Then she remembered what Sadie had said about a baby.
    “Did you hear what she said about a baby?”
    Holly nodded. “And something about a senator, too. That would explain the ring.”
    “Would a senator buy an expensive ring like that for a hooker?” Gemma asked as she tapped the screen of her phone to pull up her contact list.
    “If he was trying to shut her up, maybe,” Holly reasoned.
    Nick’s cell number appeared and she tapped that as well. His voice mail kicked in and Gemma left a message for him to please call her.
    “Let’s get to the hotel. I feel like I need a shower,” Holly said, selecting the address of their hotel on her GPS.
    Their hotel room was clean but pretty basic. Neither of them required much in the way of amenities. It had two big beds, plenty of towels and plenty of hot water and that was all Gemma needed. She was drying her red-gold curls when Holly stepped into the steamy bathroom with her phone.
    “It’s Nick.”
    “Thank you,” Gemma whispered and then tapped the screen to accept the call.
    “Hey, what’s going on in the big city?” Nick asked when she answered the phone.
    “Lots of stuff going on but not the right stuff,” Gemma told him, wiping steam off of the big mirror in front of her.
    “How so?” he asked, sounding genuinely interested.
    “The detective here isn’t any more interested in solving the case than the one in Gypsy Hill,” Gemma began.
    “Is there a case to solve?”
    “They don’t think so. They think it was an overdose or perhaps an accident,” Gemma paced around the bathroom. “They wouldn’t even take the ring I found. Told me to just keep it. They said we couldn’t even be sure it was hers, maybe it was just left in the car or in one of those old coats.”
    But you do,” Nick guessed.
    “I do.”
    “How long I’ve waited to hear you say those words to me,” Nick teased.
    The statement confused Gemma for a moment and then she rolled her eyes at her reflection in the mirror. “Nick, this is no time for joking.”
    He laughed. “Okay. Go on and tell me about your theory.”
    “Her name was Opal Sparrow. She had a mom and a dad and a little sister named Natalie. She also had an arrest record,” Gemma told him.
    “Uh-oh?”
    “Prostitution.”
    “Okay,” Nick said.
    “We went to visit her parents.”
    “I’m sure that was hard,” Nick said quietly.
    “They were somewhere between hurt and angry and in no mood to talk to us at all,” Gemma told him, running her fingers through her curls, trying to control them as they dried. “I felt especially bad for her sister.”
    “That must have been tough.”
    “And they said they’d never seen the ring before. It wasn’t an heirloom and they wanted nothing to do with it,” Gemma added.
    “So you’ll be home tomorrow,” Nick said, sounding somewhat hopeful.
    “Um, I guess,” Gemma had no intention of telling him where they’d been all afternoon or what they’d been doing. “We still have to check out some jewelry stores and maybe do a little shopping.”
    “Sounds like fun,” Nick said.
    Ignoring his