Free Little Ghost Lost (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 5) by J.D. Winters Page B

hour later, we were almost done. I didn’t have much to contribute. Captain Stone being the man he was, seemed to be a little suspicious about that. “Are you sure you have never met Jerry Moore?” he kept asking.  
    “If I ever did, it hasn’t stuck with me,” I said again and again.  
    He knew all about my reasons for knowing Celinda, and what I was doing in the house next door the day before the murder. He tried to wring me like a washcloth, always twisting to get something new, searching for an angle. But I had nothing for him.  
    “How well did you know the deceased?” he asked me sternly, acting as though he hadn’t asked me that very same question ten other ways already.  
    I sighed, but played along. “You mean Jerry Moore? Not at all. I never met him.”
    He frowned as though he thought I was holding something back. “Are you sure?”
    My smile was forced but necessary. “Of course I’m sure.”
    Pulling open a drawer, he brought out a photograph and handed it to me. “Look closely. You’re sure you don’t know this man?”
    It was a picture of Celinda and Jerry in happier times. I only assumed it was Jerry. After all, I had seen the man that morning, but he wasn’t in any condition for quick recognition. In the picture, he looked like a handsome older man, gray hair and goatee, as well as a receding hairline. His arm was around Celinda and he looked a bit possessive, but otherwise, nothing remarkable.  
    “No. I’m sure I never saw him before this morning.”
    He pulled back the photo and looked at it himself. “He was quite a skilled gymnast,” he mused softly. “Won medals at the state level, as I remember.” He mentally seemed to shake himself and looked up, frowning as though to wipe out any personal impression he might have given me. “Anyway, if you think of anything you’ve seen or heard about anyone in this case, mention it right away.”
    I hesitated, then I started to bring up my curiosity about the silver business and Jerry’s part in it, but he didn’t seem interested in that. I decided he needed to be made interested.
    “You do know that a bunch of valuable silver pieces have gone missing, don’t you?” I pointed out.
    He looked surprised. “Really? How do you know?”
    Ooops. That was a good question. For all I knew, the missing pieces were just part of the normal rotation of stock for Jerry and Richard. But somehow, I didn’t think so.  
    “I saw some pieces yesterday, especially a huge sterling silver pitcher in the Tiffany mixed metal style that I’d been told was worth a fortune. It wasn’t there this morning when we found Jerry.” I shrugged. “I don’t really know what their sales methods include, but I’ve got to say that I saw places in the library that had been filled yesterday and are now empty. You might want to look into that.”
    He stared at me, made a notation on his calendar, and went on asking me about Jerry, even though he had to know by now that I couldn’t help him there. I had very little to contribute. And then I remembered what I’d seen as we were leaving the neighborhood.  
    “Okay, here’s something that made me look twice,” I said. “Just was I was pulling out of the Pennington driveway, I saw my boss arriving at Celinda’s house. You were there. What was he doing there?”
    He looked up at me and shrugged. “They used to be married,” he said.  
    My eyes widened in surprise. “Who used to be married?”
    “Celinda and Vance. Didn’t you know that?”
    I shook my head slowly. “No,” I said, still reeling with the news. “I did not know that. Wow. How long ago was that?”
    He leaned back, thinking. “Let’s see. They got married right out of high school as I remember, and headed for Hollywood. She was going to art school and he was going to be an actor. Ten years later they were both back, no longer married and Vance was no longer an actor. He was working for the city. Celinda was still painting, though. I guess