A Mouthful of Murder: A Frosted Love Cozy Mystery Book 4 (Frosted Love Mysteries) by Carol Durand, Summer Prescott Page B

being made privy to those kinds of
details because it might hamper the investigation. I hate to say this, but the
only way that Ian Barker could’ve known the precise spot where his aunt had
died…”
    “…Is
if he was the one who killed her,” Beckett finished the thought. “That’s the
missing link in the evidence,” he said, light dawning.
    “Missing
link?” Missy was confused.
    “Although
I wasn’t allowed to personally conduct any of the investigation on the case,
due to my connection with you, Detective Johnson brought me in to help sort
through the evidence and try to make some sense of what was going on. He knew
that I wouldn’t be biased in my assessment, even if it ultimately implicated
you, and he needed an extra set of eyes. After meeting your friend, Echo,
something about her just didn’t seem to be adding up, so I had a law
enforcement buddy of mine in California do some digging, and found out that the
name Echo Willis was an alias, and that she had fled the state to escape a very
abusive ex-boyfriend, who had ties to drug dealers and other assorted thugs.”
    Missy’s
eyes widened. “Echo came to Louisiana to hide?”
    “Apparently,”
Chas nodded. “And unfortunately, she didn’t cover her tracks well enough.
Jenkins found her and has been stalking her for weeks.”
    “What?
He’s here? Oh my goodness, is Echo in danger?” Missy worried.
    “Not
any longer. The body you identified in the morgue was Albert Jenkins.”
    It
took a moment for Missy to register the full impact of Chas’s words, and when
they sunk in, she felt faint and a bit nauseated. Dropping her head into her
hands, she tried to puzzle out all of the implications. “So, the homeless guy that
I gave a cupcake to was really a bad guy who followed Echo out here from
California?” Beckett nodded. “So, then…did he actually kill Mrs. Nesbitt?”
    “All
of the evidence had been pointing in that direction. The fingerprints that he
left on your phone, were a match to those left at Cora Nesbitt’s home. He was
nowhere to be found after the murder, but you and Ben both saw him lurking
about in the general vicinity of the ice cream shop on more than one occasion.
There was a foul-smelling substance on his clothing when he died, and when we
tested it, the lab came back with a very unusual result.”
    “What
was it?” Missy asked, breathless.
    “Snake
feces. Apparently Mr. Jenkins was the man who wrangled all of the snakes that
were dumped into your shop. It turns out that one of his money-laundering
businesses for the drug trade out in California had been a pet shop
specializing in reptiles. He’d had experience in handling even the most
venomous of snakes, and had apparently used them on more than one occasion to snuff
out competitors in his particular line of work, but walked free because it
couldn’t be proven.”
    Missy
shuddered at the thought of death by snake. “So, when you say that Ian Barker
provided the missing link in the evidence, what did you mean?”
    “Well,
despite the fact that Albert Jenkins was a verified bad guy, who had definitely
been in the wrong place at the wrong time, there were a few things that didn’t
quite add up. The first and most obvious is motive. What reason could he
possibly have to kill Mrs. Nesbitt? It made no sense, particularly if he was
trying to maintain a low profile while he stalked his ex-girlfriend. Secondly,
there was physical evidence that just didn’t fit.”
    “Like
what?”
    “Like
the finger that was in your peach basket. It belonged to Albert Jenkins. If he
were the one making threats, why would he cut off his own finger to do it? We
did scrapings of the material under the nail on the severed finger and found
DNA samples that didn’t match his, almost as if there had been a struggle and he
had scratched his adversary. At the crime scene, there was a heavy pewter
candle-stick that the killer had used to strike Mrs. Nesbitt in the back of the
head before pushing her