Without Any Evidence

By Paula Underwood Winters

Carly never figured she'd be dragged into a murder case like this one. There wasn't even a body, but like it or not, it was her job to find out what happened to Claire Simon Booth. While trying to sort out this crime, she meets a handsome distraction, but because he may be involved in her case, does she or doesn't she get involved?
This is the first in a series of Carly Malone Mysteries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paula Underwood Winters
• Release date: May 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781935271864

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Without Any Evidence

Paula Underwood Winters

Copyright 2011 Paula Underwood Winters

Published by Westview, Inc. at Smashwords

ISBN: 978-1-935271-86-4

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Chapter One

Carly never figured she’d be dragged into a murder case like this one. There wasn’t even a body, for God’s sake. But like it or not, it was her job to find out what happened to Claire Simon Booth.

Claire was a wealthy young woman with two children, a husband, and a brand new house – and as Carly would soon find out, she was missing.

Carly’s office wasn’t much to look at; in fact, it wasn’t even a real office at all. It was a big gray room with lots of gray cold metal desks. The entire detective squad worked out of this one room. It smelled like stale cigarettes and sweat. Since most of the detectives were men, that made perfect sense. The windows of the room looked directly at the back side of a brick wall, leaving no room for daydreaming while gazing out at the clouds. Not that any of that mattered, because the windows usually had the old Venetian blinds closed so you couldn’t actually see out anyway. The blinds were yellowed and sticky with the years of buildup from all the cigarette smoke that always seemed to hang in the air, even though smoking had been banned in the building for years. It was one of those rooms where if you weren’t in a bad mood when you walked in, you were after you’d been there a few minutes.

Carly’s day had started out badly and had gone downhill from there. She had one of those summer sinus headaches that seem to affect everyone in Nashville at one time or another, but she dragged herself out of bed and into a hot shower anyway. What she really wanted to do was stay buried under her covers with her eyes shut all day.

Instead, she threw on her cleanest pair of dirty Levis and a clean black t-shirt. She sat on the chair next to her bedroom window and pulled on a pair of white men’s tube socks and slipped her feet into her sneakers. She took the stairs two at a time and ran out the door grabbing her keys from the table by the front door as she ran.

As she jumped into her Jeep, she made a mental note to run it through the car wash. The usually shiny dark green Jeep looked gray from all the dust that had settled on it over the past few weeks of dry summer weather.

She was already running late to work when she got caught behind a fender bender on Hillsboro Road at Edgehill and was stuck in the traffic. She looked in her rearview mirror and caught the woman behind her using the down time to put finishing touches on her makeup.

Damn. Just what I need, she said to no one in particular.

Then she looked over to the car next to her and saw the hunk behind the wheel laugh. She was busted. He’d seen her talking to herself. She blushed, turned her head and looked at the slowly moving traffic. Great, she thought this time, instead of talking out loud. No wonder I can never get a date. I talk to myself. Who wants to date a chick who talks to herself?

Parking in downtown Nashville was always a challenge, but after driving around the block three times, she finally found an empty space about a block away from the station. Carly was dripping with sticky sweat when she walked through the door of the Criminal Justice Center. The cold air from the AC hit her sweat-soaked clothes, and a chill ran down her spine and gave her goosebumps.

Her first stop was the coffee pot where she poured a cup of coffee, spilling the sugar as she tried to get the packet open. She turned the corner and BOOM, she ran right into the trash can. She stumbled to her desk, fell into her chair, let out a big sigh and was about to take a sip of coffee when the phone rang.

Metro Police, Detective Malone speaking, Carly said with her soft Southern accent that wasn’t country Southern, but almost a Scarlett O’Hara Southern.

My name is Ted Simon. I’m not sure I have the right department, but my daughter Claire is missing and I’m afraid she might be…dead.

How long has she been missing?

Well, to tell you the truth, she’s been missing for two weeks.

Mr. Simon, is it? Carly asked with a note of condescension that she wouldn’t have had if her day had been going better.

Yes.

Why did you wait so long to report your daughter missing? Is she in the habit of disappearing? And what makes you think she might be dead?

Looking back, we shouldn’t have waited. It’s just that Jerry, that’s Claire’s husband, told us that she had decided to take a short vacation. You know, just to get away from everyone for a little while. And that she specifically asked that no one get in touch with her for two weeks. She said she wanted time to sort out her life, you know? And that’s why I think she may be dead. I don’t think she’d ever stay away like this.

To tell you the truth, Carly knew exactly what he meant. There had been times in her life when she wished she could just run away from everything for a few weeks. Heck, there were times she would have loved to get away from her life for just a few days.

Carly took down all the important information from Mr. Simon and told him they’d be in touch to ask more questions after they’d checked out a few things. Even though she was homicide and this was technically a missing person, homicide was slow right now and she figured since she had the time, she might as well check it out herself.

Prior to Mr. Simon’s report, Carly’s life had been so full of ups and downs that when he told her about his daughter, she had to admit she had her doubts as to whether she was really missing or just enjoying a sunny beach somewhere with a cool breeze blowing over her and a margarita in her hand. That certainly was what Carly Malone would’ve liked to have been doing.

She was attractive, but not what you’d call beautiful. She probably could have been beautiful if she tried, but she was always happy with very little or no makeup, her brown hair, cut short, had a slight natural curl to it and it was so soft that it felt like baby hair. Jeans and a t-shirt were her clothes of choice. To dress it up, she’d throw on a blazer and maybe a pair of earrings. She was slender and well toned from her power walks through the hills at Warner Parks and Radnor Lake. She probably carried no more than 110 pounds on her 5’4" frame, and only that because of muscle tone. Her parents named her Carlton, after her dad. She was supposed to be a boy. Since she wasn’t a boy, and they didn’t have any girls names picked out, they named her Carlton anyway, but everyone called her Carly.

Her mom was the typical housewife and her dad was an insurance salesman who made a pretty good living. A couple of years after Carly was born, they had another daughter, Maggie. Then Carl up and died when he was only 34 of a heart attack leaving her mom with a pretty heavy load to carry and no one to help her. That’s probably why Carly never blamed her for marrying Ed less than a year after her dad died. After all, what did her mom know about making a living