Room for Suspicion

Room for Suspicion A Cluttered Crime Mystery Novel Carol Light Room for Suspicion Copyright© 2023 Carol Light EPUB Edition The Tule Publishing, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED First Publication by Tule Publishing 2023 Cover design by Croco Designs No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. ISBN: 978-1-959988-24-3 Keep Up with your Favorite Authors and their New Releases For the latest news from Tule Publishing authors, sign up for our newsletter here or check out our website at TulePublishing.com Stay social! For new release updates, behind-the-scenes sneak peeks, and reader giveaways: Like us on Follow us on Follow us on See you online! Dedication For Marta Justak, whose steadfast support and wise advice is priceless. We have always encouraged each other to reach for our dreams, and I couldn’t have achieved this one without you. I value our friendship more than words can express. Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other is gold. —Girl Scout song based on Joseph Parry’s poem “New Friends and Old Friends” Table of Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Acknowledgments Cluttered Crime Mysteries series About the Author Chapter One As Crystal Ward turned into her client’s driveway, she noticed the signs were missing. Last week there had been two identical political ads proclaiming Scott Danforth for U.S. House of Representatives planted in the grass. The double dose of smiling headshots of Danforth against backgrounds of the red, white, and blue of the American flag would have been hard to miss, even with her mind still focused on the argument she’d had with her husband this morning. Who had removed the signs? The original one had been stolen, and her client, Farrah Compton, had doubled down, replacing it with two signs. Now the question was whether Farrah would respond with three or increase the signage exponentially to four. The mental picture of Scott Danforth’s smiling face multiplying across the yard made Crys grin as she parked in the driveway. Sometimes having an eye for detail was a curse, but today she welcomed the distraction from what she could have said—should have said?—to Rick to convince him that her work as a professional organizer was important to her and potentially life-changing for their family. Not that anything she said would have done any good. Rick just wasn’t ready to listen. She wasn’t giving up, though. She steered her thoughts to the task at hand: helping Farrah Compton reorganize her home office. Farrah’s suburban American Dream residence with its unfenced expanse of manicured green lawn (currently uncluttered with signs) represented everything Crys dreamed about in a house. Not that she didn’t appreciate her own Craftsman bungalow in a much less affluent Chicago suburb, but imagine having more green space than concrete and mature oak trees already changing into their fall colors. Even better, imagine not having to worry about money or the mowing and fertilizing, pruning and raking of this little slice of paradise. And then there was the spacious interior… Enough house envy. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, as her mother would say. Literally, in this case. Crys unclipped her seat belt. By some miracle, she had arrived a few minutes early for their ten o’clock appointment. Traffic in Chicago, even in the northern suburbs, was as unpredictable as the autumn weather. Today the road gods had smiled and the weather had cooperated, although a cold front was expected to blow through around midday. That was why at the last minute before leaving the house, she had decided to add a linen blazer to her outfit. Locating and pressing it to look more professional for this meeting had cost her an extra fifteen minutes, but she was willing to take the risk to make a good impression. Farrah, a stylish professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, favored suits, silk blouses, and scarves tied in an endless variety of styles. Crys glanced down, hoping the blazer hadn’t wrinkled too badly during the drive. She shouldn’t have looked. In the sunlight, the black fabric appeared faded to a dark gray. The wrinkles, like the sign thief, had returned. It’s my linen look, she decided. She would wear the wrinkles and crinkles, natural to this fabric, with dignity and hold her head high. She could remove the jacket as soon as she was inside. She grabbed her handbag and binder and stepped out. As she locked her van, a travel-worn black Jeep Cherokee pulled up next to her and shuddered to a stop. The man in the black leather jacket who emerged gave her a wide smile and a “hiya.” “Are you one of my sister’s students?” he asked, his focus shifting to the notebook she carried. “I’m Randy, Farrah’s brother.” His friendly smile broadened, and he stuck out a hand. She took it and gave him a firm squeeze. Other than his coloring and the shape of his eyes, he didn’t resemble his sister. Instead, he looked like a hipster slipping into middle age, with a double chin under his unshaven jaw and a slight paunch lounging on top of his jeans. A scar by his left eye made his lid droop into a skeptical slant, but his smile challenged that