Title: A loan-ly
murder
By
Author: John M. Floyd
Tag line: Angela
Potts, as usual, had cracked the case.
The sheriff just couldn’t figure out how
she’d done it!
Police characters: Sheriff Chunky Jones, amateur sleuth Angela
Potts
The gist: Angela is
sitting outside the courthouse playing a game on her phone. The sheriff asks her for a ride because his
car won’t start and both his deputies are tied up elsewhere. There’d been a murder, so Angela was
delighted to help. Angela asked if the
sheriff was questioning a recent suicide, a man named Zack. Sheriff Jones said no, that Zack’s daughter authenticated
the suicide note. He added that someone
had shot the banker, Jerry Westbrook, in the chest. The bullet wound was located right above the
top button of his cardigan sweater. When
they got to the bank, the bank manager told them the coroner was on his way and
pointed to a distraught woman, Katie, a new customer, who had found the body. The sheriff nodded to Angela to indicate she
should talk to Katie while he examined the body, which was located in the man’s
office. Jerry was slumped face down in
his desk.
Katie told Angela that she had come in for
a loan and found the man dead. Angela asked her to describe the body. She described Jerry Westbrook as bald on top,
eyeglasses, cardigan sweater and a gold watch.
She said she heard footsteps running out back and feels she just missed
whoever did it. Mrs. Potts remembered
that Katie was the daughter of Zack who had tried to take out a loan and was
turned down. The same Zack who had killed himself. Sheriff Jones told Katie he needed to search
her purse. When he did, he found an
automatic pistol with a silencer.
When asked how Angela was so sure Katie
was the killer, she remarked that if Katie had been innocent she couldn’t have
seen what she saw.
Crime scene: Bank office.
Clues:
What Katie saw.
Suspects: Katie.
Red herrings: None.
Solution: A cardigan sweater has buttons down the
front. Unless Katie had seen the victim
sitting, before falling face down on his desk, she couldn’t have known it was a
cardigan.
My two cents:
His
squad car won’t start? I suppose that
could happen. Even in a car that’s well maintained, mechanical things stop
working. But in that case he’d call one
of his deputies to come get him. Murder
trumps most other calls. He wouldn’t
take an old lady to a murder scene.
Dear
Gawd, this is a homicide investigation and the sheriff has got a civilian
questioning the main witness.
When you can see the dead body just by looking
in the office doorway, why would anybody, police or civilian, ask a witness to describe
the body? They wouldn’t. The author
needed the shooter to say he was wearing a cardigan, so he threw that scene in
there.
Where
are the surveillance cameras? All banks
have inside surveillance.
Bank
managers don’t call the coroner. They
call 911. The police arrive, they call
in the detectives. Those are the guys
that call the coroner’s office.
By
the way, just FYI, an automatic pistol ejects a spent cartridge. I’m sure crime scene will match that casing
up with her gun.
The
police don’t get to search someone’s purse without permission. Most times the police have the person sign a ‘permission
to search’ form, a form that will hold up later in court. Otherwise they need to obtain a search
warrant.
The
title was good but the tag line was out of sync with the story. He couldn’t have known how Angela knew,
because he didn’t talk to the main witness and had no idea what was said.
It
wasn’t the best Angela Potts story. It
wasn’t the worst. There’s always lots of
little technical issues in these Potts stories. Two
stars for a decent clue (even though it was revealed in an odd manner) and good
pacing.
