It is my sincerest hope that this brings you some enjoyment. I would be absolutely honoured to continue posting this little home town type cozy mystery to the end.

DON SIMMONS
AND
THE CASE
OF
THE LADY IN BLUE

BY
DONALD HARRY ROBERTS
THERE’S BEEN A MURDER IN B-TOWN AND IT IS SHROUDED IN MYSTERY BUT DON SIMMONS IS READY TO SOLVE IT.
PART ONE
1
It was ridiculous. Who would laugh at a funeral, especial when the deceased is the victim of a murder?
Tanya Locklyn tried everything possible to keep from laughing as she stood over the coffin of her dearly departed fiancé. She should have been shedding big mournful tears but her’s were pouring out with nearly uncontrollable bouts of stifled laughter better known as hysterical giggling. But there was a secret truth to her weeping, the kind some called alligator tears that police could never know about; how much she had wished him dead, even though she had nothing to do with his murder, well not directly unless wishes do come true.
Tanya wiped away her tears and leaned down to kiss Edward J. MacQuarry on the forehead. “It’s all mine now you lousy creep.” She whispered.
2
At the cemetery, two hours later Tanya listened to the Minister deliver a heart rendering speech for someone he had never met. If he had known the truth about Ed MacQuarry she wondered if he would have used other words in another mood. But no one but her knew the real man laying dead in his coffin. The man with a million secrets. The man with two lives. Lives Tanya only became aware of in the nick of time and completely by chance. The kind of chance that finds one in the right place at the wrong time overhearing a conversation she was never meant to hear that ripped her heart to shreds. But with that discovery a side of her emerged she never knew was possible. A side so dark it frightened her. Nonetheless embraced it.
3
The minister’s voice faded and a gossamer veil of memories shaded out her surroundings as Tanya slipped back, back in time to the day the phone rang and the horrible conversation Ed had with…with her. And even though she could only hear one side of it, it was enough. “She has no idea what is going on. She will do anything I ask. Then when we have the money you and I can just disappear.” …silence… “Yes. I love you too.”
Ed dropped the receiver into the cradle and went off unaware that Tanya had been standing just around the corner. Tanya wondered what would have happen if she had answered the phone instead of Ed.
The caller would have hung up and Tanya would have gone on with life, oblivious of her peril until Ed simply vanished. But what money was he talking about? Not her’s. She did not have money, at least no more than what she made at her job.
4
It had all gone perfectly. Tanya had followed Ed around without him having the slightest notion she knew he was up to something that included her but only as leverage or something. Somehow she was a link to money, a lot of money.
In the first few days she learned nothing. There were no more phone calls and Ed went to his job at the insurance agency every day. Then on the fourth day he went out for lunch as usual but this time to a different place. It was there she saw who must have been the woman on the phone. She was sure of it.
They kissed. Not like friends but like there was a deep intimacy between them. Then they went to a booth. Tanya managed to slip into the one net to them.
5
Ed: “Naddie. It is not going to work. Not unless she dies. I can write in a dozen clauses that will increase the value but every one of them will call for her death. So I ask. Do we want to commit murder? And, by the way, if she is murdered I could garner two million. But to be honest I do not believe I am capable of murder.”
Naddie: “I could. I have before and I would again, especially for two million. But none of this works unless you marry her. Fiancés don’t usually make out insurance policies or wills for that matter.”
Ed: “We have set the date. It’s in two months. After we are married and the insurance policy is in place we should wait at least a year or, you kill her but don’t tell me how or when you plan to do it. Even then we should wait out a little time. After the policy has been honoured then we can slip away to somewhere that no one knows us.”
The waitress came to take their order. Tanya slipped out of her booth and hurried out into the afternoon rain, tears rolling down her cheeks, partly from sorrow, partly from fear, but deeper she felt a kind of anger far beyond any she had ever experience.
6
Tanya wondered if it always rained at funerals and if most people were sad at the lost of their loved ones. Not like her…relieved and thankful someone had disposed of her creepy fiancé. Which is a story she told the police when interviewed.
First she explained what she had overheard in the bar and how she subsequently continued to follow her fiancé and his consort.
“Then the night Ed was murdered he was with someone else. A Lady dressed in blue. They met secretly outside a nightclub and…well…started…oh…started to have sex, right there in the alleyway. I almost vomited. But it did not go all the way. Just as he was going to…you know…she stabbed him. Not once but five times.”
I was afraid to call the police but I did, anonymously from a payphone. Do you know how hard it is to find a payphone these days? I had to search for an hour.”
7
The police had her statement printed and she signed it, but the detective, Inspector Oxford was giving her a look that said, “Ok lady but I don’t believe you”. It was something she felt, call it intuition but he let her go with a warning not to leave town and to keep herself available for more questioning. Tanya was not sure what else she could possibly say, but as she walked out of the Inspector’s office he invited someone else in, another woman who gave Tanya a terrified look as they passed by. It was just then that Tanya remembered she too was wearing a blue dress that night.

TBC