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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

As I sat in stop-and-go traffic, I got out my notes from the meeting with the police and went back over the alibis of all of my suspects.

According to their notes, Derek and Judith had both been at work at the time of their father’s murder, supposedly at their desks, though no one had yet confirmed that they actually were where they said they were.

Gwen was also at work, using the phone. Though phone records did show a number of outgoing calls during the time that Wendell was killed, I didn’t think this was much of an alibi. With private access to Wendell’s office, she could’ve easily put someone on hold, gone into Wendell’s office and given him the lethal injection, and then come back out again. Of course, there was still the fact that Gwen wasn’t the person I chased down the stairwell. If she was the killer, she certainly wasn’t acting alone.

Ditto for Alan Bennet, who was “running errands” at the exact time of death. I remembered how impatient and out of breath he had been when he first came into his office and found me sitting there. I wondered if somehow he and Judith had been working together to murder her father, if it was Judith I had chased down the stairs.

The maid, Angelina, had been at the grocery store; apparently, the checker remembered seeing her. Her brother, Nick, had been busy in the city, helping Marion Smythe with her shopping.

I supposed with Nick and Marion out shopping, that gave either one of them opportunity, of sorts. One or the other of them could’ve slipped away at some point, dashed over to the Smythe building, and done Wendell in. I decided to reserve judgment on Nick and perhaps look more closely at him for some sort of motive. As for Marion, my gut told me that her grief was too genuine, her sorrow too real, for hers to have been the hand that killed her husband.

That left Sidra. Supposedly, she had been attending a Bible study at the time of Wendell’s death, though that was thus far unconfirmed because the pastor wasn’t available.

I looked up the address of St. James Church, seeing on the map that it was near the Smythes’ home. Depending on how long it would take to get through all of this traffic, I decided to stop there on the way to the house, knowing that if I skipped dinner with the Smythes I would just have time to squeeze it in.

Twenty-One

Twenty-One

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The front doors of the church were locked, so I walked around the building and tried each one. The place was modest in size, though very lovely, and I wondered if there was a parsonage nearby. I was just about to walk away when I heard someone calling from the window of a building across from the church.