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  TOP OF THE HOUR

  ANINA COLLINS

  Top of the Hour

  Controversy sells as much as sex, and nobody knows that better than the local radio morning DJ who loves to talk politics. His shows enrage people, but who hated Lee Reynolds enough to shoot him point blank and leave him for dead in the woods outside of town?

  Poppy and Alex have no shortage of suspects and for once aren’t at odds on who they like for the crime. But all is not well between the partners. This time, murder has brought with it a new love interest for Poppy, but Alex isn’t happy with this turn of events.

  Will he lose Poppy, the one person he trusts in Sunset Ridge?

  The Top of the Hour is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  2016 Eight Feathers Press, LLC

  Copyright © 2016 Eight Feathers Press, LLC

  Kobo Edition

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Published in the United States

  ISBN: 978-0-9972153-5-9

  Book Cover Design by Susan Coils

  aninacollins.com/subscribe

  Click on the covers below to learn more about the series:

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About the Book

  Copyright Page

  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

  About The Author

  Chapter One

  Alex’s call came in just after seven PM, rousing me from a painfully dry article on winemaking I’d been trying to get through for the past two hours. I knew by the sound of his voice when he said my name that our newest case was no ordinary stolen decorative scarecrow taken from someone’s front porch. Jumping in my car, I raced up the road past the Hotel Piermont to a wooded area teenagers had long used as a not-so-secret place for their parties after football games and parked next to two police cruisers and the coroner’s van.

  The air smelled earthy from the decaying red and yellow leaves that carpeted the ground beneath my feet. I loved this time of year for just that smell alone, but it was more than that. Autumn in Sunset Ridge wasn’t like it was in New England, where I was sure every picture ever taken of fall had been snapped. There as you crunched your way over fallen leaves, your cheeks were treated to the brisk wind and chilly weather and the nights got downright cold. The fall season in the mid-Atlantic region, on the other hand, was best described as the best of both summer and autumn. Our days still warmed to the high sixties and sometimes even the seventies, and nighttime temperatures made a sweater necessary but not much more.

  It was with all these thoughts rambling through my brain that I trudged up the hill toward where Alex, Craig, and Donny stood surrounded by lights all focused on a spot just beyond them. As I reached the three men, I took a deep breath of that heady dead leaf smell and exhaled, surprised at how winded that short walk had left me.

  “Whew. I need to get into shape, it seems. No more danishes from The Grounds from this point on,” I joked as Alex and Craig chuckled in response.

  “At least you’re in better shape than this poor guy,” Alex said in a somber voice. “No more anything for him.”

  I looked down at the ground and saw a man lying face down on his stomach about five feet away. Dressed in jeans, he also wore a dark sport coat with an unmistakable bullet hole and bloodstain through the center right between his shoulder blades. A white bullseye drawn around the hole directed my gaze to it immediately.

  Turning to look at Alex, I asked, “Someone think we needed help figuring out what killed him? I’m feeling like we should be insulted.”

  He gave me a tiny smile as he tried to remain more professional. “I think the killer had something else in mind. This is Lee Reynolds.”

  My head pivoted back to look at the dead man in front of us and I stared down to see something familiar in the body. Lee Reynolds had been the local version of a morning shock jock on AM 790 WXSN for the past five or so years. Offending people on a daily basis had become his trademark. Now the bullseye made sense.

  “Wow, I didn’t realize that before now. Did you ever listen to his show?”

  Craig leaned around Alex and raised his hand. “I did every morning. It was pretty addictive, actually. I didn’t even agree with most of his opinions on anything, but after the first couple shows, I couldn’t stop myself from listening.”

  Looking over at Craig and then over at me, Alex mumbled, “Yeah, like a verbal train wreck. It looks like we’re supposed to believe one of those people he angered with his opinions finally got to him.”

  “Do you?”

  He stood silently looking down at our latest victim and shrugged. “I believe nothing right now other than Lee Reynolds is dead and someone shot him. Until I hear anything more, that’s all I can believe.”

  Donny looked up from where he crouched next to the dead man and said, “Well, I can tell you it was a .38 that killed him and the murderer drew around the wound with what looks like regular sidewalk chalk like kids use to draw with.”

  “Did we find the piece of chalk he used?” Alex asked no one in particular.

  Craig shook his head. “Nope, not yet. There’s a lot of brush and leaves here, so it might take us a little while.”

  “Search this entire area within a few hundred yards. Our murderer may have thought they were smart and threw it as they ran away, assuming they threw it at all.”

  “Got it. I’ll let you know what I find,” Craig chirped as he switched on his flashlight and took off to begin his search.

  “Can you tell us anything else, Donny?” I asked, hoping some kind of forensic evidence might help us start our investigation.

  Even though he didn’t have to answer to me, the coroner for Sunset Ridge always did and always with a smile. “I’m guessing he’s been dead for a couple hours.”

  “Why?” I asked as I stepped closer to the body, curious why Donny was able to be so precise. It was completely uncharacteristic for him.

  He pointed at Lee Reynolds’ shoulders with his pen. “Rigor mortis has begun to set in. See how stiff he is up here especially? That tells me the murder likely took place around dinnertime, say four or five.”

  I heard a voice come over Alex’s radio announcing a car accident had occurred at the corner of Simpson and Ford Streets. Distracted for a moment as he answered the call, I returned my attention to Donny and asked a question I realized Alex may have asked already.

  “Did the murderer take anything from him, Donny? Did you find anything on him?”

  He shook his head. “There’s nothing on the body but his wallet with some money, pictures, and credit cards. It doesn’t look like they took anything.”

  “Alex, I’ll come back with Jason and search for that chalk after I handle the fender bender over on Ford,” Craig yelled a
s he ran toward his squad car.

  Nodding, Alex answered, “Okay, but get back here as soon as possible. I don’t want it raining before we have a chance to find that chalk.”

  As Craig sped away, I nudged Alex’s arm. He looked down at me and with a smile I told him what the weatherman had happily announced that morning as I watched the seven AM local news.

  “They’re not expecting rain for at least the next four days. I saw it on the weather this morning.”

  “Good. We need to go speak to Lee Reynolds’ wife, so we don’t have time to go searching the forest floor for a piece of kids’ chalk.”

  “Are we doing that now?”

  He looked at Lee on the ground at our feet and took a deep breath. “Yeah. No point in putting off the inevitable. I’m hoping she’ll be able to tell us something about who might have wanted to do this to her husband.”

  We turned to walk back down the hill and I asked, “Are you thinking she’s the prime suspect at this point?”

  “That’s usually the case, but I’m not thinking that this time.” He turned to look at me and smiled. “I’m keeping an open mind until you tell me what you know of Mr. and Mrs. Lee Reynolds.”

  I watched where I stepped to avoid tumbling down the hill and landing flat on my back. Once we reached level ground, I headed toward my car as I broke the news to him that I couldn’t help him with any juicy tidbits this time.

  “Not a thing. I’ve never spoken to either of them, and that morning rabble rouser thing isn’t my shtick, so I know nothing of him at all, other than what he did for a living.”

  Alex opened his car door as I reached mine. Shaking his head, he put on a look of disappointment I knew was fake. “You’re letting me down, Poppy. I can’t be on the top of my game without you clueing me in behind the scenes about the sordid details of people’s lives.”

  I chuckled at his teasing. “Officer Montero, if I’m not mistaken your former job title was detective. Looks like you’re going to have to detect the clues this time.”

  “It’s not the same,” he said with a smile. “I’ll meet you at your house and we’ll go from there, okay? See you in five.”

  I gave him a salute and hopped into my car to head back to my place. As I drove there, I tried to remember if I’d ever seen Lee Reynolds or his wife in McGuire’s, but I couldn’t think of a time they’d ever been in. He was something of a local celebrity, so maybe he’d spent his time at Diamanti’s instead, but I’d never seen them there either. Perhaps his fame made going out in public difficult. Local radio DJ wasn’t much, but in a small town like Sunset Ridge, it was more than most people could lay claim to.

  We pulled up to the Reynolds’ brick townhouse on Colonial Drive, a newer section of town developed for younger residents who preferred the freedom from mowing the lawn and raking leaves in a yard. The area had three sections of twelve townhomes each arranged in a horseshoe design along Colonial, Regimental, and Union Drives.

  “I’m always impressed at how different this part of Sunset Ridge looks from the Victorians downtown,” I said as I opened my car door to get out.

  “I’ve only been here once or twice. Both times were trespassing complaints, I think,” Alex said as he rounded his side of the car to join me.

  That didn’t surprise me. While the people who lived in the townhouses were basically as friendly as anyone else in town, they seemed far more concerned with belongings and property, in my experience.

  “Well, it seems that murder has come to this part of town too.”

  He pointed toward the red door at 114 Colonial Drive. “That’s the house there. Her name is Jessica Reynolds.”

  As he knocked on the door, I braced myself for what was to come. I wasn’t sure when this part would get easier, if it ever would. Each time I watched Alex break the news to the family member left behind, my heart ached for them. I knew he usually suspected them in the demise of their loved one, but I also had a sense he felt bad for them too.

  A petite woman with long brown hair and striking green eyes opened the door and focused on Alex’s police badge. “Is something wrong, officer?”

  “I’m Officer Alex Montero and this is my partner Poppy McGuire, Mrs. Reynolds. There’s been an accident. Can we come in?”

  She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, “Oh my God! What happened?”

  Alex reached out to gently touch her shoulder. “Can we please come in and talk for a few minutes? I think it might be better if you were sitting.”

  Jessica Reynolds nodded and let him help her inside to a black leather couch in the living room. They sat down next to one another, so I found a seat in a matching recliner across from them and watched as he told her what had happened to her husband. She broke down and sobbed even harder at the news that someone had shot him in cold blood.

  “Why would anyone do that to Lee?” she asked as she wiped the mascara that had run under her eyes.

  “We were hoping you might be able to help us with that very question. I know it’s difficult now, but we want to find the person who killed your husband, Mrs. Reynolds,” Alex said in his kindest voice I knew was genuine.

  She sniffled and nodded. “Please call me Jessica. I know you probably think the person my husband was on the radio deserved someone doing this to him, but he wasn’t like that. That persona was just for the show, nothing else. In real life, he was a pussycat. I used to tease him that if people ever found out what kind of man he really was, he’d lose his show in a second.”

  “Other than disgruntled listeners, did he have any real enemies?” Alex asked as he took out his notepad and pen from his blue windbreaker.

  “No, I can’t believe he did. Anyone who met Lee in person could see how good he was.”

  While his wife protested the idea that someone would confuse the online personality with the real man, I imagined Lee Reynolds had offended a lot of people with his ultra-conservative rants every Monday through Friday. He wasn’t exactly that pussycat she described every morning when he was bashing every liberal politician and social program for all it was worth.

  “Did he ever get any threats against him?” I asked, imagining every angry listener had thought about giving Lee a taste of his own vitriolic medicine at one time or another.

  Jessica turned to look at me and without missing a beat, she answered, “Not here, but maybe at the station. You have to understand Lee never brought his work home with him. Who he was at work was just that—his work persona. When he left the station, he wasn’t that man anymore.”

  “We’ll make sure to check at his work for any leads, Jessica. Now I have to ask this, even if it seems wrong,” Alex explained with a sympathetic smile. “Were there any problems between the two of you?”

  Her eyes grew wide at his question and she shook her head violently. “Oh, my God! No! How could you ask that? We were just two normal people living our lives.”

  I reached over and lightly touched her arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay. We have to ask because the police always look at the wife first. It doesn’t mean we think anything like that is the case here, though.”

  She gave a heavy sigh and nodded her understanding. “We were blissfully happy. Really. I bet everyone says that, but we were. Things were so wonderful recently. We were planning to have children soon since he was making good money at the radio station.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, truly hoping the woman in front of me was innocent. I knew Alex hated when I got attached to suspects, but just the way she talked about them wanting to have children made me want her to not be involved in his death.

  Alex directed her attention back to our case. “Did Lee have a cell phone? We didn’t find one on him.”

  Jessica nodded. “He always had his cell phone on him. Always.”

  “What time did you expect him home?”

  She frowned as she recounted the last time she spoke to him. “He said he had to work late tonight, but that was nothing new. He worked late every Thursday. I
expected he’d be home at the same time he always got home on Thursdays. Around six.”

  Alex jotted down the details in his notes while I again expressed my sympathy for the loss of her husband. When I looked into Jessica’s eyes, I saw what I believed was real sadness. Whatever Lee Reynolds was to the rest of the world, he was the man she loved and now he was gone.

  By the time we got back to Alex’s squad car, I was dying to know what he thought about the case so far. Once we closed our doors, I turned to him and asked, “Did you catch how she said he always worked late on Thursdays? What do you think of that?”

  The corners of his mouth hitched up slightly before he turned to face me. “I was interested in how she said things were so wonderful recently too. I wonder how things were before.”

  Deflated that he already suspected Jessica of being involved, I slumped back in my seat. “Do you ever not think it’s the person who loved the victim right off?”

  “You make me sound like some ogre, Poppy. I go where the evidence takes me.”

  “Well, how about we go to WXSN and look for evidence there? Like maybe we can find out what he did each Thursday?”

  Alex chuckled at my suggestion. “And clear the grieving Mrs. Reynolds while we’re at it?”

  “I wouldn’t be opposed to that, so start the car and let’s go. You’re ruining all the good feelings I got from Jessica.”

  He put the car in drive and headed down Colonial Drive back toward town. “I knew you’d think she was innocent. I swear you’re too soft sometimes, Poppy.”

  I poked his shoulder. “I take exception to that. I’m not soft. I just believe in people actually being in love. Is that so bad?”

  As he turned the corner off Colonial, he rolled his eyes. “It’s not bad. It’s just not how real life works. I’ve seen too many cases where the loving husband or wife is anything but.”

  “Well, let me keep my illusions, okay, at least until we hear what the people at the radio station have to say?”