Real Murder (Lovers in Crime Mystery Book 2) by Lauren Carr

work with me,” Joshua said with an evil tone in his laugh.
    “How am I supposed to get to work?”
    “You aren’t supposed to get to work,” he replied. “Do you remember yesterday? Your lieutenant said you’re on sick leave for two weeks. You aren’t cleared to work until the doctor   approves you. So go back to bed.”
    She slammed down the rear compartment to the Vette.   “I hate lying around doing nothing.”
    “Be gentle with my car,” he ordered. “Do something to keep yourself occupied. Take Irving for a walk. Cook lunch for when I come home.”
    The memory of their conversation in front of the fireplace in the middle of the night came to her mind. She had forgotten all about Joshua drinking a brandy before the fire while telling her about— Damn! Mike—what was his name? The deputy who had landed in the lake.
    “Did you call Tad yet about the black sheep hooker?” she asked.
    “No,” he replied. “I’m in court today. I’m hoping to talk to him this afternoon.”
    “Didn’t you say that friend of yours—what was his name?”
    “Mike Gardner,” he said.
    “He was adopted …” The memory came back.
    “We don’t know that for sure,” Joshua said. “This is why you need to take some time off. Your brain is still quaking inside your skull.”
    “Who came over last night?” she asked. “Why didn’t you bring me my cookies and milk?”
    “You know where they are,” he said. “If you want milk and cookies …”
    “I hate this,” she said. “I’m calling Tad to find out about Mike’s autopsy, and you can’t stop me.”
    Joshua laughed. “If looking into Mike Gardner’s murder will keep you home and happy and quiet, then go for it, baby.”

By the time she hiked up from the garage to go through the back door into the country kitchen, Cameron’s head felt like it was going to explode. The pain was so bad that she broke down and took one of the pain pills prescribed by the emergency room doctor. With Irving and Admiral following    at her heels, she went into the study to plop down at Joshua’s desk.
    Catching her image in the mirror that hung on the wall above the sofa, she started and moved in closer. Is that me? Her forehead was puffy and black and blue. The welt across her cheek had swollen up to her eye so that it was almost shut. She dabbed at her tender wounds.
    People are going to think Josh is a wife beater. Thinking of her own reputation of being a woman in control, she reconsidered with a smile. They should see the other guy who’s in jail where he belongs.
    Pleased with the satisfaction of her arrest the day before, Cameron dismissed the brutal image in the mirror. Calling her bruises and black eye badges of honor, she plopped down behind Joshua’s desk and switched on her laptop.
    With some effort, she remembered the name of the   missing, and assumed dead, deputy. Michael Gardner.
    Maybe this whole concussion thing is worse than I thought.
    Using her official log in, Cameron made her way to the police records for the missing persons report for the case file in the database.
    Michael Gardner disappeared while on duty on Friday, September 13, 1996.
    Friday the thirteenth? I guess it was an unlucky day for him.
    When he had failed to make his regular report into the station at two o’clock, his fellow officers went out looking for him. According to the case file, the last person to see Gardner alive was Joshua Thornton and the server at Allison’s Restaurant on Carolina Avenue in downtown Chester, where Gardner had gone to pick up his lunch for takeout.
    The report indicated that nine months after Gardner had gone missing, Joshua Thornton had contacted the sheriff’s   department to report that Gardner had told him that he was going out to Tomlinson Run Park to meet an informant about a case he was working on involving the murder of a prostitute, which was news to his fellow deputies and the sheriff at the time. The sheriff’s department had no