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Back A Penny for Your Thoughts Save as PDF
Chapters (62)
  1. Cover
  2. A PENNY
  3. Dedication
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Twenty-Four
  29. Twenty-Five
  30. Twenty-Six
  31. Twenty-Seven
  32. Twenty-Eight
  33. Twenty-Nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-One
  36. Thirty-Two
  37. Thirty-Three
  38. Thirty-Four
  39. Thirty-Five
  40. Thirty-Six
  41. Thirty-Seven
  42. Thirty-Eight
  43. Thirty-Nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-One
  46. Forty-Two
  47. Forty-Three
  48. Forty-Four
  49. Forty-Five
  50. Forty-Six
  51. Forty-Seven
  52. Forty-Eight
  53. Forty-Nine
  54. Fifty
  55. Fifty-One
  56. Fifty-Two
  57. Fifty-Three
  58. Fifty-Four
  59. A Sample Chapter of Don’t Take Any Wooden Nickels
  60. About the Author
  61. Other Books by Mindy Starns Clark
  62. About the Publisher

Or maybe it was less complicated than that. Maybe it was simply a matter of ambition. Perhaps Alan felt that with Wendell out of the way, Judith would move up to President and he could step in as CEO of Smythe Incorporated. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had killed just to get ahead.

I scanned the screen and thought a bit about Judith. What did I know of her so far? She was heartless, direct, ambitious, and up to something. Her ridiculous acts of vandalism against Sidra might have nothing to do with the death of her father. But at least I knew now that she wasn’t quite right, that she was acting out of some sort of desperation. Was it too much of a leap to imagine her committing a murder?

I might have believed she had done it if the family dynamics were different, if she had perhaps suffered from years of abuse or neglect, which was the usual pattern for patricide. But from what I could tell, Wendell had been an exemplary man and a wonderful father; the usual child-parent murder motivation just wasn’t there. Despite Judith’s vicious acts of vandalism, for some reason I just didn’t peg her as the murderer—unless Alan Bennet had somehow pulled her in and twisted things around until she had become a party to something that ordinarily would’ve been unspeakable.

Derek’s possible motivations seemed even further far-fetched. Could he have been involved in financial funny business within his own company? Perhaps his father discovered the mess, decided it was Derek’s doing, and threatened to fire him or turn him in to the police. It just didn’t fly for me, particularly when I thought about Derek’s personality. Certainly, he had his faults; he was weak, complacent, and a bit confused spiritually. But he just didn’t seem like a murderer. About the most likely scenario I could come up with regarding Derek had to do with the medical report I had found in his bedroom. Apparently, Derek was slated to donate a kidney to his ailing father. Was it possible that in a moment of fear—and knowing it was likely his father would die anyway and the whole thing would’ve been for naught—Derek had changed his mind and murdered his father instead? I doubted it, but I could think of no other motive.

Gwen Harding was a bigger mystery, though my gut told me she wasn’t guilty. She had had the easiest access for committing the murder, but I knew she couldn’t have done it alone because of the person I chased from the bathroom. I did feel that Gwen knew something, something she wasn’t telling me. But I just didn’t think she had any part in her boss’s death. Her shock at the situation had been too great, her grief at his demise too genuine.