Marriage and Murder (Cedar Bay Cozy Mystery Book 4) by Dianne Harman

my favorites. Take your
time,” he said, quickly reaching into his pocket for a treat for Rebel as Kelly
walked away with her back to them.
    She returned a few minutes
later with his coffee. “Mike, I went over to Amanda’s Flower Shop a little
while ago. I wanted to thank her in person for the flowers she did for the
wedding, but I need to talk to you about some things I found out while I was
there. Give me a couple more minutes, and then I can sit down. Madison’s on
break from classes this week, so she and Roxie can handle the start of the lunchtime
crowd.”
    “No problem. I could use a
break myself.”
    Five minutes later she
returned with his burritos and a fresh cup of coffee. “Mike, I don’t know what
you’ve found out, but I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations that I need
to share with you.” She told him about her talks with Mrs. Allen and Celia,
with Sophie, and finally her encounter with Sydney while she was at the flower
shop.
    When she was finished
talking, Mike put his coffee cup down and wiped his mouth with his napkin.
“Kelly,” he said in a voice that sounded extremely aggravated, “I know you well
enough by now to know if I asked you to stop talking to possible suspects in one
of my cases that you wouldn’t. I also know you well enough to know you’d
probably have an excuse for going to see Mrs. Allen and Sophie…”
    She interrupted him,
“Mike, please don’t be upset with me. As a matter of fact, I told you I was
going to Mrs. Allen’s home. I didn’t want her to find out about her son’s death
from someone else, and it was a plausible reason, not an excuse. As for Sophie
Marchant, I hadn’t planned on going there at all, but once I found out that she
and Jesse were very close, it seemed like the right thing to do, rather than
have her find out from some television report or read it in the headline of the
local newspaper. You can call those excuses if you want, but I certainly don’t,”
she said. “As for meeting Jesse’s ex-wife, Sydney Allen, at Amanda’s Flower
Shop, how could that possibly be an excuse? It was purely a random thing. How
was I to know she’d walk in the flower shop while I was there?”
    “I have no idea, but you
probably saw her walking down the street or something,” he said raising his
eyebrows and taking another sip of coffee. “Oh well, I know I’m not going to
get anywhere with this. What do you make of these women? Sounds like a lot of female
cat-fighting to me.”
    “I honestly don’t know.
It’s pretty obvious that Sydney and Celia hate Sophie. I liked her, but if what
Sydney says is true, then she certainly didn’t tell me everything about her
background.”
    “To play the devil’s
advocate, why should she? You were someone who had just told her the man she
loved had been murdered. There was no reason for her to tell you about her
first husband’s death and the trial, if it’s true.”
    “No, you’re right. I only
asked her about how she happened to come to the United States,” she said as she
paused and looked around the room. “I can’t stay much longer. Looks like we’re
getting busy, and I’ve got to help Roxie and Madison. Anyway, what did you find
out?”
    “Something I sure wasn’t
expecting. I found out The Crush has been losing money for months, and that
Jesse owed back taxes and was way behind on the payments he was supposed to
make to the wineries that supplied him with the wine he sold. He was big time, seriously,
in debt. I’ve been going through his files all morning, and I found something
else that I thought was very interesting.”
    “What?”
    “Many years ago when he
was still married to Sydney, he’d taken an insurance policy out on his life in
the amount of one million dollars. Evidently he never changed the beneficiary after
his divorce, because Sydney is still named as the primary beneficiary.”
    “Wow! That would sure give
her a motive to kill him. Jesse dies and bingo, she gets a million