Another Chance (A Penelope Chance Mystery Book 2) Read online

  When the utensils were in place, Jacob brought out the bowl of pasta and set it in the middle of the table.

  They said grace and Penelope didn’t waste any more time. “So how was the rest of your day?” she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary.” Jacob swallowed a bite of spaghetti and asked, “So how did it go with Belinda?”

  “Well,” Penelope began slowly. “Donny did a full interrogation and based on the information he has so far, it appears Belinda may be innocent. Donny is checking her alibi so he can exclude her as a suspect. I know that she had problems in the past.” Penelope kept her eyes focused on the spool of spaghetti on her fork. When she looked up to gauge Jacob’s reaction, he was looking at her and slurping a long string of spaghetti. She was about to continue when he spoke.

  “Yeah, I know she had her problems over at Grace Memorial, but I believe she was innocent. And everyone deserves a second chance, right?”

  Penelope smiled. The thought of how Jacob treated her brother when the rest of the town turned their back on him flashed through her mind. Doug was a drunk and had done nothing but skate by the past few years. When he became the prime suspect in his ex-wife’s murder, everyone assumed the worst. Not Jacob—he was skeptical, but he kept an open mind.

  “Yes, they do,” Penelope agreed. “What I don’t get though . . . is if Belinda is innocent . . . and she didn’t know about the drugs in the desk drawer, how did they get there? Someone had to put them there. Someone connected to the robbery. Someone who had access to the receptionist’s desk.”

  Jacob studied Penelope. His thoughtful face was handsome. He looked sure of himself even when he had questions. That was probably what made him a good doctor. No one would doubt him, even if he silently doubted himself.

  “We’ll find out who did this,” Penelope reassured him after some moments of silence.

  Jacob looked up at her, frowning. “We? Are you working this case?”

  His words stung. They were a reminder that she wasn’t. She pushed her offense away. “Well, I’m not . . . but Donny’s been keeping me up to date and he’s been allowing me to assist.” She paused to read Jacob’s face. The last time she’d talked about getting involved in the robbery case, they’d had a falling out.

  His face was neutral.

  It was a little unsettling—a cop that couldn’t figure out what someone was thinking? It was like having to write with your left hand when you were right-handed.

  “Is this going take a lot of time out of your day?” Jacob asked.

  “I hope not.”

  “And you’re still going to do wedding stuff?”

  Her mind hadn’t been on wedding planning at all. “Well, I was going to—”

  “You still want to get married, don’t you?”

  Where did that come from? The question hit her like a punch to the stomach. “Of course, I do! Did I ever give you the impression that I didn’t?”

  “You told me you were going to take time this week to scout locations, call florists, find out about DJs, that kind of thing. It’s a lot of work.”

  “I’m worried. You could be in danger.”

  “Penny, the Gainesville guys are good at what they do. Don is on the case and from what he tells me, this Detective Ballard fellow is good at his job, too. You don’t have to be worried about me.” His voice was gentle and assuring, but it did nothing to calm the storm that had risen inside her.

  She stared at her plate, no longer hungry.

  “I want to make sure my fiancé is still alive by the time the wedding rolls around,” she said, and her voice cracked. The surge of emotion surprised them both, and there was a void in the room.

  “Penny, I’m still here.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  She fought to squelch the tears that had popped out of nowhere. She bit her cheek, trying to get the feelings to go away. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little rattled. Things have been rough . . . you know? And with the robbery, you getting shot, your belongings returned, one of the suspects turning up dead . . . it’s made everything a little—”

  “Weird?” Jacob asked.

  “Yeah. Weird.”

  “But we’re a team. Remember? We’ll get through this together.”

  Penelope sat silent.

  “You’re making that cop face,” Jacob added.

  She tended to zone out as her brain put together a picture of the events surrounding a crime. This picture was incomplete and troublesome considering the possibility that Jacob might know the suspect.

  “I have some cop thoughts,” she admitted. “But I’m shelving them for now. What do you say to a movie and a cup of hot cocoa?”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  Penelope put aside thoughts of the investigation and focused on spending a pleasant evening with her fiancé before she had to head home.

  Jacob collected the dishes and quickly washed them. She was pretty sure that he only had two plates in his house, and they were always clean. She thought about the merging of their homes and what would happen when they married. At least the dishes would always be clean. She let out a slight giggle.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “I’m just happy.”

  And she was. She really was.

  She put a kettle on to boil, hoping that her feeling of security would last.

  CHAPTER 48

  Wednesday morning the hospital cafeteria at Grace Memorial Hospital was quieter than usual. Penelope sat with Gabriel at a round table in the corner. She looked into her coffee as she stirred it with the plastic stick.

  Gabriel smiled at Penelope like a kid who had just gotten an early peek at his Christmas presents. “So, what is the status of the case? Unofficially, of course.”

  Penelope stopped stirring and looked around the cafeteria, making sure that no one else was listening. “Well, Detective Greene searched the victim’s apartment Monday afternoon. They found his car in the parking lot. There was a lot of blood, and they think that may have been where he was killed. Forensics is going through his car.”

  “That’s big,” Gabriel said.

  Penelope nodded and curled her fingers around the hot cup of coffee. “They also found several blank prescription pads in his apartment.”

  “Prescription pads?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whose prescription pads?” Gabriel asked, eyes narrowed.

  “Jacob’s, from the Franklin Clinic,” Penelope said.

  “Do they have any idea how they got there?”

  “Jacob said they’re older . . . a type he doesn’t use anymore. He never had any stolen, so they may be counterfeit.” She paused and took a sip of her coffee. “The office manager, Belinda Crowe, might be connected. It seems she may have a connection to the victim.”

  Gabriel sat looking at Penelope intently.

  His gaze caused her to shift uncomfortably in her seat. “Anyhow,” she continued. “Yesterday morning, when Donny went to the Franklin Clinic to ask Jacob about the prescription pads, Jacob noticed that one of his new pads was missing. He found the missing pad in a spare lab coat, but while they were searching, they found drugs from the robbery in the reception desk.”

  “The drugs from the Grace Memorial robbery last Friday? In the desk Belinda uses?”

  “That’s right. Donny brought Belinda in for questioning and let me observe. That’s why I couldn’t take your call yesterday.”

  “You said Belinda had a connection to the victim?”

  “Yes. She worked at the Gainesville Recovery Center during the time that Kevin Scott was a patient. She was a clinical associate for a Dr. Teresa—”

  “Behrmann.” Gabriel finished. “Dr. Teresa Behrmann?”

  “That’s right. You know her?”

  “Yes. I know Dr. Behrmann very well. She’s the colleague I was telling you about—the one that was supposed to consult on the Michael Findley trial, but got called away on
a family emergency. I might even know Belinda. Did she work here at Grace Memorial before she got the job at the Franklin Clinic?”

  “She did.”

  “Short brown hair with a smile that lit up a room?”

  Penelope smiled. “That’s Belinda.”

  “Wow. It would be too bad if she’s mixed up in all of this.”

  “Well, Donny’s not sure how she’s involved, if she’s involved at all. He’s checking her alibi.”

  Gabriel sat back and processed the new information.

  “This can’t be comfortable for your fiancé.”

  Penelope was confused for a moment before she realized what Gabriel meant. Of course! From a purely procedural view, Jacob was an obvious suspect. It hadn’t occurred to her for one second that he could be involved somehow. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. An uncomfortable feeling wedged itself between her ribs, and she exhaled around it.

  “Of course, you didn’t. You are a fiercely loyal person, Penelope. You could never see the people you love in a negative light. Why, look at how you defended your brother, Doug Foster, when he was accused of murder. All signs pointed to him, yet your belief in his goodness was so strong that you were able to solve a rather convoluted case and exonerate him. Why should this be any different?”

  “This time is quite different,” Penelope said in a tone that was a little harsher than she intended. “There is no way that Jacob could have done it. He was badly injured.”

  “Could be motive.”

  Jacob’s facial expressions from the murder scene replayed in Penelope’s mind. “He was genuinely shocked to see the robber’s body there in the river. I think he felt bad for him and was sad that he lost his life.”

  “I believe you, but the Gainesville police are going to be looking at him pretty closely.”

  As he said the words, Penelope knew he was right. She would be suspicious of Jacob too if she didn’t know him. He certainly had a motive to kill the robber. A weak motive, but still motive.

  “And, they’ll look closely at the time of death. Which was when?”

  “Late Friday night or early Saturday morning,” Penelope said, her thoughts reeling.

  “They’ll probably think he had a partner to help him dispose of the body,” Gabriel continued.

  “Well, it’s doubly impossible because I know where Jacob was the whole time. He was at Doug’s place sleeping downstairs, while I was upstairs.”

  Gabriel leaned in conspiratorially. “All night?”

  Nervousness bunched in Penelope’s stomach. “No, not all night . . .”

  “When was the last time anyone checked on him?”

  “I checked on him at midnight, Friday.”

  “And what time did you hear from him the next morning?

  “About seven o’clock . . .” Penelope’s voice trailed off as she realized where Gabriel’s line of reasoning was going.

  “So he has no alibi from midnight to seven a.m.?”

  Penelope felt her face crumple as she made the connection. “But . . . Jacob wouldn’t . . .” Even as she protested, she knew that Jacob essentially had no alibi. When she analyzed the evidence with the cop part of her brain, she arrived at the conclusion that Gabriel had reached. Donny soon would think the same thing.

  Jacob was the prime suspect.

  When she considered the events through the eyes of love, the room began to spin.

  Not again. Please Lord, not again.

  Just months after she had cleared her brother of murder, it now appeared that her fiancé could be a suspect in a homicide case. She was certain of his innocence, as she had been with Doug. The truth would be known, but at what cost? A life had already been taken—what else would be lost or ruined in the wake of this crime?

  She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.

  Gabriel looked concerned. “Penelope, are you okay?”

  “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted.

  “We follow the clues and re-examine the evidence.”

  Penelope nodded. A steely resolve began to solidify inside of her. She needed to do everything she could to protect Jacob and prove he wasn’t involved. She wasn’t going to let anyone she loved get hurt on her watch.

  CHAPTER 49

  “Where to first?” Gabriel asked, looking at Penelope rather intensely across the vast interior cabin of his Hummer.

  “Head down University Avenue. I want to check out the victim’s apartment.”

  Gabriel looked at Penelope and nodded. “You think Detective Greene may have overlooked something?”

  “No, not at all. I just want to have a firsthand look at the primary crime scene.”

  She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she felt compelled to see what the victim saw in his day-to-day life. Being a cop meant viewing things from every angle. You never knew what would lead to the next development in an investigation.

  “Kevin Scott’s apartment it is,” Gabriel confirmed.

  They rode the short distance in silence, and a light drizzle began to fall. As they drove east on University Avenue, Penelope noted a distinct change in the atmosphere and the architecture. This would’ve been a tough neighborhood to grow up in.

  “Turn right on 24th Street,” she told Gabriel. “His apartment complex is a couple of blocks up on the left.” Penelope paused. “I want to see the world through his eyes. See what he saw . . .”

  Gabriel chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  Penelope had been lost in thought—contemplating her next move—and she hadn’t realized she’d been thinking aloud.

  “It’s incredible to watch you work. It’s not often that I get to spend time with students that are now law enforcement professionals. Some investigators wouldn’t think of looking at the world from someone else’s perspective. They gather evidence. They analyze the evidence, they conduct interviews, and that’s it. But a good investigator knows that you need to submerge yourself into the world of the crime. You have to see things the way your subject saw them. In this investigation, we are trying to figure out the motivation for a man to commit robbery as well as to determine why he was murdered and by whom.” He chuckled again. “I guess I’m laughing because you had the same idea as I did. Let’s see the world through his eyes.”

  Penelope was flattered to hear Gabriel compare her to himself. She had few role models in her life, and Gabriel was certainly one of the most important. She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything.

  Gabriel appeared lost in thought. His eyes scanned the surroundings, taking in old buildings and a handful of small businesses that appeared to be thriving in spite of the general dilapidation of the area. They passed a small liquor store that served as the local hangout for a group of scruffy teenagers, and Gabriel pulled up to a large multi-building apartment complex. Penelope hadn’t told him the exact address, but he stopped right in front of Kevin Scott’s building and cut the engine.

  “How did you know which complex?” Penelope asked.

  “The orange spray paint markings on the pavement,” Gabriel said, pointing over his left shoulder.

  Penelope was familiar with the brightly colored symbols. She used them often with traffic accidents to document things like vehicle location, direction, and skid marks. They were also used at crimes scenes to mark victim, vehicle, and evidence locations, to assist investigators in reconstructing the scene at a later date, if needed.

  She got out of the SUV and walked over to one of the marked parking spaces. Gabriel followed close behind.

  “Okay, so the victim’s car was parked here,” she said, talking herself through the crime scene. It was her way of working through something and seeing if everything added up.

  “And someone came up from behind and shot our vic in the stomach,” Gabriel said, standing behind Penelope, his voice in her ear.

  She jumped, and Gabriel grinned.

  He’d stepped into her reenactment, playing the part of the kille
r.

  Penelope shivered. “That’s pretty gruesome, but no. According to Donny and these markings, our vic was shot over there.” Penelope pointed to a large bloodstain on the pavement in the opposite parking space. “He was parked here, but shot there.”

  Gabriel stepped back and nodded. “So, possible drug deal gone bad?”

  “It looks that way. The vic was probably taking the drugs out of his trunk and putting them in the trunk of the buyer,” Penelope said, piecing together the different bits of evidence. It was magic when a crime investigation came together like this—one of the things about her job that she loved.

  “And then the buyer shot the vic, put his body in their trunk, and dumped him in the Franklin River?”

  Penelope nodded. “That’s what Detective Greene suspects.”

  “But why not just take the drugs? Why move the body? And why dump the body in Franklin?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping you can help me figure out.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Penelope took a step back, physically doing what she was doing in her mind—distancing herself from the crime scene and the victim’s point of view. “I want to get a feel for how this guy lived.”

  “What floor?” Gabriel tilted his head upward as if trying to see into the windows of the building. Small beads of water formed on his high forehead from the mist that wasn’t quite rain.

  “Third floor. Apartment 323,” she said, a little worried they might be recognized as police, but people walked by and didn’t give them a second glance. It didn’t hurt being in civilian clothes.

  A call box was located next to the heavy front door. Penelope gave the door buzzer an experimental push, but nothing happened. She pulled the door handle and was not surprised to find the lock was broken. It looked like someone had taken a screwdriver and hammer to the locking mechanism and the landlord had never fixed it.

  “No telling who’s been in or out of here,” Penelope muttered in Gabriel’s direction.

  They entered a gloomy hallway lined with metal mailboxes. A staircase with a scarred metal banister led up to the upper-floor apartments. She turned back to see if Gabriel was following. Her eyes met his and he nodded. She did her best to act like she belonged there in case they should run into a resident.