Free The Old Witcheroo by Dakota Cassidy Page A

pretty freaked out. So I’m going to hope his not getting in touch with me means he’s flown the coop. He said they’d look at him hard, but I don’t think he thought for one second they’d find anything, let alone a gun.”
    Was that what he’d meant by looking hard at him? Had he, in his rush to cover up a murder, forgotten the murder weapon?
    No. That was absolutely mad. I know I should be looking at all angles, even the possibility that Dana was guilty, but he wasn’t stupid. Being a cop, he’d been around plenty of crime scenes, knew all the ways not to get caught. He’d never leave behind evidence so damning—especially evidence so easily found by two newb cops.
    “No,” Win defended Dana. “Officer Nelson wouldn’t run away. He’s many things, difficult, inflexible, yes. But he’s no coward. Officer Nelson comes from fine stock—fine, honorable stock.”
    I was clinging to that. Clinging so hard my fingers were numb. I hated what this evidence said, what it would do. “Then why was there a gun at his house, Win? The same type of gun used to kill Sophia? A gun Baby-Face says looked like it was recently fired? Whywhywhywhywhy?” I groaned again.
    “I don’t know. Maybe Baby-Face doesn’t know his guns from his arse and he was just speculating. But I can assure you, Officer Nelson is no silly knob. He’s a policeman. Would someone well-versed in crime scenes actually do something as stupid as leave a gun he’d used just lying around so his colleagues could find it? That’s absurd. I’m convinced if that is indeed the gun used to kill Sophia, it was a plant.”
    I checked my phone for the hundredth time in an hour to see if Dana had texted me something—anything. But there was nothing. “I just don’t know what to think anymore, Win. You’re right; it’s too obvious, just leaving evidence like that lying around. But who would frame Dana for murder?”
    “I don’t know, Dove. What I do know, is we have an appointment with Merrily Watson in five minutes. Can you devote your full attention to her needs or will you lose focus with Officer Nelson weighing so heavily on your mind?”
    I raised a tired hand and readjusted my turban. “I’ll be fine. She should be easy enough. She just wants to contact her sister Hester about some recipe for blueberry jam she can’t seem to locate.”
    The town’s end-of-summer fair was coming up, and the Watson sisters (who’d quite rebelliously, some would say scandalously, kept their maiden names even after marriage) made jam that was always a huge hit. They never failed to sell out. Since Hester Watson died, Merrily had floundered without her sister’s assistance in the kitchen.
    The grand prize at the fair was at stake, an all-expense-paid vacation to Maui and two thousand dollars. And even though Merrily very loudly proclaimed she thought all mediums like me were the devil incarnate, she’d broken in her desperation to claim the grand prize she considered rightfully hers.
    “All right then, while we have a few minutes, have you looked Sophia up on Google?”
    “Got that covered, Winterbutt,” Belfry twittered. “Not a whole lot about her. In fact, almost nothing at all. Not even a Facebook page. No pictures of her or anything either, but she’s on LinkedIn as a librarian. She just turned thirty last month. Graduated high school in 2003, went to some online college to get her librarian’s degree. Likes hiking, glassblowing, romantic comedies, and cooking. Loves to read, especially spy novels like Clancy and such.”
    “She doesn’t have a Facebook page?” I asked, astonished. “Who doesn’t have a Facebook page these days? Even Officer Nelson has a Facebook page.”
    “I don’t have a Facebook page.”
    “That’s because you’re dead, Winterbutt,” Bel teased.
    “Maybe that was what Sophia was going to tell Dana—why she wouldn’t accept his proposal?”
    “Because she didn’t have a Facebook page? That’s hardly a reason not to