Free Classic Revenge by Mitzi Kelly

now."
    Edna's smile was gentle. "Yes, you are. You're the
only one who can."
    "Okay, I'll bite. What do you need help with?"
    "Proving your innocence," Millie said, looking straight
into his eyes.
    Sam's face became devoid of all expression. "I have
an attorney to do that, Millie. I appreciate the thought,
but I'm going to let him take care of this."
    "In other words, you're just going to sit on your butt while you're being railroaded for murder? That's not
the Sam I know."

    "My attorney will prove I didn't do this. It's just going to take time."
    Trish placed her hand over his. "The police have a
lot of circumstantial evidence, Sam, but sometimes
that's all it takes to get a guilty verdict. We've all seen
enough real-life court shows to know that."
    Sam sat up straight and pulled his hand away. "What
circumstantial evidence? What are you talking about?
And how do you know all this?"
    "So the old man does have some life still in him,"
Millie muttered. "Go ahead and tell him, Trish."
    As Trish told Sam what they had found out from
Chief Espinoza, she watched his expression change
from a total lack of concern, to disbelief, and then to
unease. "You need to let your attorney know this, Sam.
That way he'll be prepared when he gets the report. But
I wanted to ask you what kind of car trouble you had
that morning. Did you know that Claire also had trouble
with her car that same morning?"
    Sam looked up and nodded. "Yes, she told me. I
didn't think too much about it at the time because she
easily had it taken care of. I never made any connection
to my own car trouble, but I can see now how strange it
looks" Sam shrugged his shoulders. "I just had two flat
tires in the rear. I must have driven by a construction
site or something. The tires weren't flat when I left the
house, but by the time I got about a mile away I could
feel something wrong. Fortunately, there was a tire
shop close by, so I simply pulled in and bought two
new ones. Sure enough, there were roofing nails in
each of the tires. It's just a coincidence, not a conspir acy. The police will realize that when they start investigating."

    But the police had already started the investigation
and may very well be finished, Trish thought. It would
be up to Sam to prove his innocence.
    "Sam, the police have already started investigating,
but I'm not sure they've given any significance to the
two incidents with the cars," Trish said. "They do consider your car trouble significant, though-a cover-up
for the crime, so you would have an excuse for being
late to your golf game"
    "Well, they're wrong."
    "We know they're wrong," Edna said, "and we're going to prove it."
    Trish coughed. Edna should have said, "and we're
going to help your attorney prove it." It seemed they
were all getting a little loose with this Sherlock Holmes
talk.
    "You've been set up," Millie said bluntly.
    Sam laughed, but there was no humor in the sound.
"Don't be ridiculous, Millie. It was an accident."
    "I'm afraid we all agree, Sam," Edna said quietly.
"It's the only thing that makes sense. Neither you nor
Claire had ever seen that radio before, it couldn't have
fallen into the tub accidentally, nothing was stolen, and
now we discover that both you and Claire had car trouble on the very same morning that Susan died."
    "Okay, everything may look suspicious, but it still
doesn't prove a murder was committed," Sam argued.
"Besides, who in the world would want to set me up for
murder? If you're right, this crime took a lot of planning. Don't you think I would have realized that someone was out to get me?" He answered his own question. "No, the idea is too far-fetched to even consider seriously."

    "Humor us," Millie said. "We're a bunch of old ladies
with nothing better to do, so humor us and answer our
questions while we play detective."
    Sam lifted an eyebrow. "What kind of questions do
you have?"
    Millie thought for a moment. "First of all, we want a
list of