Murder on the Half Shelf by Lorna Barrett

had lost himself in the pages of a book.
    Why was she even thinking about him? It wasn’t because she cared. Well, she did care. But she
didn’t
care, too. Her feelings were all mixed up. She felt sorry for anyone in his position. But now she questioned her own motives for wandering in this direction.
    She continued to walk down the pavement, into the shadow of the neighbor’s hedges, which were in need of trimming. Sarge paused to give the base of the bushes a good sniff. Tricia tugged the leash, but Sarge had found something that had piqued his interest. The truth was,
any
smell piqued a dog’s interest.
    “Come on, Sarge, we’d better start for home,” Tricia said, but the dog strained against the leash, trying to pull her forward. Had he found a dead bird or something equally smelly?
    Tricia yanked her keys out of her pocket and pressed the button on the fob. A thin beam of light cut the darkness. She trained it on Sarge’s head, then raked it along the base of the bushes. Tricia bent lower and could see something yellowish and metallic caught in the shrubbery. Her small flashlight’s beam caught a rusty-colored substance along the bottom edge of the object and her stomach tightened. She yanked Sarge away from the bush and quickly crossed the street. Sarge reluctantly followed.
    Tricia pulled her cell phone from her pocket and punched number four on her speed dial. It rang twice before a deep male voice answered, “Hello.”
    “Grant, it’s Tricia. I’m on Maple Avenue a couple of housesdown from the Sheer Comfort Inn. I’ve found something I think you should see.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yes. And…you might want to bring an evidence bag with you.”
    Tricia was frozen to the bone and night had fully fallen by the time Chief Baker’s SUV arrived in front of the pretty Victorian home. She stood under a lamppost stamping her feet in an effort to keep the circulation going. Sarge sprang to his feet and started to bark as Baker exited the vehicle.
    “Why is it always you?” Baker asked in exasperation as he joined Tricia on the sidewalk, holding a large flashlight in one hand.
    She shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess. Come on, I’ll show you what I’ve found.” She led him and Sarge back to the hedges across the way. “Let me have your flashlight,” she said, and he turned it on for her. It wasn’t hard to find the object—Sarge had his nose right on it once again.
    “Hold him back, will you?” Baker said, and took the flashlight from her, inspecting the object. “Is it a—”
    “Brass candleholder,” Tricia finished. “Pretty heavy, from the looks of it. It looked like there was some blood on it, too.”
    Baker squinted up at her. “Did you see another one like it in the inn the other night?”
    “I wasn’t paying that much attention. But I’ll bet if you ask Angelica, she could give you an inventory of everything she saw in that house.”
    Baker straightened and looked her in the eye, his exasperation level escalating. “I’m glad you found it, but…I really wish
you
hadn’t found it.”
    “Well, my fingerprints won’t be on it, so that ought to clear me.”
    “Unless there are no fingerprints on it. That could meanyou wiped it down before discarding it. And what brought you out here tonight, anyway?”
    “Angelica went out for the evening and asked me to walk her dog.”
    Baker scowled. “And the rest of it?”
    “I don’t know what you mean?”
    “You just happened to be walking Angelica’s dog—right past the house where a murder occurred the night before. A murder where
you
found the body. The body of your ex-lover’s wife. And now you conveniently find what appears to be the murder weapon.”
    “Would you rather I hadn’t reported it?”
    He shook his head wearily. “No.”
    “Why don’t we hope this
is
the murder weapon, and that it will lead you to the
real
killer, instead of all this supposition that I held some kind of grudge against a woman I’d known for less than