‘Dr Kimble has the same parking permit on his car. I only noticed it when we were leaving the surgery. He’s having an affair with Joanne,’ I felt like my big reveal needed a drum roll. Mindy frowned as she tried to work out what that meant. ‘You see, Dr Kimble and Joanne want to be together, so they hatched a plot to get rid of Derek. He gives her a cream laced with something that will make Derek’s skin condition even worse than it already is and all she has to do is apply it. I guess they were building up the dose until it killed him. No one would question his death because he was so sick and under the care of his doctor.’
Mindy frowned. ‘I guess that makes sense.’
‘However, in the meantime, John Ramsey, a man we know to have little life beyond the firm he co-owns …’
‘Do we count the crossdressing?’ Mindy wanted to know.
I corrected myself. ‘No life outside of his work apart from some dedicated crossdressing. He wants Derek to hand over the reins to the new blood so the firm can move forward. Derek refused, they fight about it, and John pushes Derek over the balcony.’
Mindy’s frown got deeper. ‘Is that a problem for Joanne and the doctor?’
‘Yes, because now Derek is in hospital and the doctors there will use the right cream. That’s why he started getting better straight away. I was there this morning and Joanne was desperately trying to get them to use the cream she had – the stuff that would kill him.’
‘So what happened to John?’ Mindy wanted to know.
‘I think Joanne killed him. The official verdict is that it was an accidental death, but Vince thinks someone tampered with his brakes and I think he might be right. Joanne is trying to kill off her husband so she can be with the doctor but then John messes things up. I think she was so angry with him, she fiddled with his brakes.’
‘I thought she had a back problem and couldn’t do stuff?’
Good point. ‘Then I guess it was the doctor.’ I shrugged. Either one could tamper with a car’s brakes.
Mindy repeated her previous comment, ‘I guess that makes sense.’ She didn’t sound entirely convinced.
I knew I was right though. ‘It all adds up,’ I claimed triumphantly.
Mindy stopped the car when I nodded that we were where we wanted to be.
‘So what now?’ she asked. ‘We try to find evidence at the Bleakwiths’ place?’
I blew out a worried breath because that was exactly my plan. I was about to break into yet another house. It was becoming a habit.
List of Crimes
Just as we were getting out of the car, Mindy’s phone rang. It came through on the car’s speakers.
‘Dad?’ Mindy answered, reading the caller ID from the screen in the middle of her dashboard.
‘Mindy, dear. I have a message from you asking that I call you as a matter of urgency. Are you in some trouble?’ Shane’s voice boomed back at her, filling my heart with hope because not only had I solved the case, we now had a lawyer on our side to straighten things out.
Mindy said, ‘Um, I might be in just a touch of bother, yes, Dad.’
I jumped in quick. ‘It’s all my fault, Shane.’
‘Felicity?’ He sounded surprised to hear my voice. ‘What’s going on?’
Feeling my cheeks warm, I said, ‘Well, you know how you said I should just keep my head down and not worry about the police?’
‘Yes,’ he replied in a tone that suggested he already knew where this was going.
‘And you said I shouldn’t worry about the chief inspector and under no circumstances do anything out of the ordinary today. Just go about my usual wedding planner business and act innocent because I am?’
‘Yes.’ Shane now sounded like someone dreading what he was going to hear next.
I closed my eyes and admitted the truth. ‘I didn’t do any of those things.’
Mindy and I heard him sigh. ‘How bad is it?’
‘We broke into a couple of places, threatened some people,’ I started listing my crimes.
‘Stole from a charity shop,’ Mindy added unhelpfully.
‘Yes, that too,’ I admitted. ‘The chief inspector asked me to turn myself in. He thinks I tried to kill Derek and succeeded in killing John. With the other shareholders out of the way, the business is mine. At least, I think that’s his theory.’
Mindy remembered something. ‘I assaulted a police officer too, Dad,’ she bragged proudly. Then she realised what she had said, and told her dad, ‘I didn’t know he was a cop though. We were trapped inside a house and he’d been following us around. I was just trying to escape.’
Shane blew out an exasperated breath. ‘Okay. I need to get ahead of this and quickly. Did you physically break into anywhere today?’
‘As in smash our way in?’ I sought to confirm.
Mindy knew what her dad was asking. ‘No, Dad, we had a key.’
‘Okay, good,’ he replied sounding relieved. ‘Where are you now?’
‘Wait, there’s more,’ I told him.
‘More?’ He couldn’t believe his ears.
‘I know who did it. I figured out what has been going on and why.’ I spent the next couple of minutes explaining what I had seen and what I knew. Going over it again, I felt even more certain than I had explaining it to Mindy.
‘So now we’re going to break into the Bleakwiths’ house to find the evidence,’ said Mindy when I finished.
‘No!’ yelled Shane. ‘Good grief. Look I’ll get straight onto the police. Just sit tight until I call you back. If they find you, let them arrest you. They will do it anyway, but you
