Framed: A Psychological Thriller (Boston's Crimes of Passion Book 2) by Colleen Connally

awry.
    For over twenty-four hours, she hadn’t been alone long enough to face the truth. Anger, slow and warm, swelled within her heart. Someone had murdered Helen.
    Did they suspect what she had done? Would she be the next victim?
    Ring. Ring. Ring.
    Her heart leaped into her throat. She reached for her phone…the other phone.
    “Yes, it’s true.”
    “No, I’m fine. Truly, I am.” There was a pause. “I have it. It’s safe.”
    The conversation ended, brief and to the point.
    Riley placed the phone back in her purse and walked back into her bedroom. She loved this room, full of character from days gone by. The house used to be a stable. Her great-grandfather had it converted into an apartment.
    She had furnished her bedroom with some of the antique furniture she had found in the attic, including an old vanity from the 1930s—a lovely piece of furniture with a rose bubble lamp on top of white croquet round doilies, alongside a tray of bottle perfumes and an attached mirror.
    The original long cushion stool sat in front. When Riley had taken it from the attic, she had discovered it had a hidden compartment under the cushion. A wonderful place to hide a document from prying eyes.
    An important document that she insisted existed. Opening the stool up, she reached down and slid the false bottom to the side. It was there…her grandfather’s will. The one he had updated well before his death…the one where Riley had been included, splitting the part of her grandfather’s estate that would have been her father’s…the will that Walter said never existed.
    The one that had gotten Helen Barlow murdered.

Chapter Seven
     
    Detective John Brophy stood in the middle of Helen Barlow’s bedroom. It was nearly 10:00 p.m. He had come alone. This murder gnawed at him to the point he had returned to the scene of the crime.
    The body was long gone. Crime-scene techs had all the evidence tagged, pictures taken, and the rooms dusted for prints. For two days now, an overabundance of investigators had been building a profile of the killer and searching for other similar murders in the federal database.
    Despite the effort made, Brophy had nothing, except a growing frustration.  Damn that Ashcroft kid!  The whole scene had been compromised by that bumbling idiot. He had ransacked the bedroom. Drawers turned out and contents littered over the floor. His fingerprints and shoe prints painted with the victim’s blood landscaped the scene.
    The problem—Freddy wasn’t the killer. He couldn’t have been. The ME had put the time of death between midnight and 2:00 a.m. His friends had given him a rock-solid alibi at the time of the death, not to mention surveillance cameras caught images of Freddy going to and from one bar to another.
    Not the actions of a reformed addict, but, also, not the actions of a cold-blooded killer.
    The question became why, in the midst of discovering this gruesome scene, had Freddy thought it a good time to look for something? Something he obviously didn’t find. Had the murderer?
    Why had Freddy and his cousin come to visit Helen Barlow that morning? What was it that the victim had that was so damn important?
    All of Helen’s friends agreed that Helen hadn’t indicated she held some devastating secret on the Ashcrofts. Helen was the loyal and responsible type. No one had heard her ever utter one negative remark about her former employers. She didn’t talk of them at all.
    On his arrival at the scene, he had immediately marked the contrasts of the two separate murders. The son had been shot dead with a quick shot between his eyes with a 9mm. No hesitation.
    Charlie Barlow lay with his keys in hand. Brophy assessed that Barlow interrupted the assailant’s escape. From the look on his face, Charlie hadn’t even time to realize the danger he was in.
    On the other hand, Helen Barlow had been brutally beaten. Rage…fury…hatred inflicted with each blow. Overkill. A crime of passion. The problem—who