Blood and Blackmail (ePub)

Please note: This novel is contained, with eight other novels of mine, in an anthology entitled Nine Murder Mysteries. Blood and Blackmail is also one of the six novels in another anthology of mine--6 Courtroom Dramas..

Jesse Barnett is confident his girlfriend Justine didn't murder Trent, her ex-husband, because he never heard any gunshots on the night the two of them broke into Trent's house to search for some obscene photos that he had taken of Justine's daughter:

Armed with only a flashlight, Justine and I left my house and drove to Trent's house. By the right side of Trent's house, there was a stone path that led away from the street, went to the side of the garage, and then curled around to the back of the house. When we reached the back door, Justine ran the beam from the flashlight to a window that was about six feet away. Walking over, she pushed the window up, and since the sill was quite low, she was able to enter the house without any difficulty. I followed her inside, and after the two of us passed out of a small utility room, we entered the kitchen. "Wait right here, Jesse," she said. "I'll go upstairs and make sure that he's gone."
She left the kitchen, and in a few seconds, I could hear her climbing the stairs. She was going slowly, but just like in the movies, some of the stairs would creak, and it must have taken her at least thirty seconds to reach the top of the stairs. I can't say with any real accuracy how much time passed after that—maybe a minute, maybe a little over a minute. Suddenly, there was the sound of a thump as if a big book had fallen off a dresser. This was followed by a few seconds of silence, and then I heard someone, hopefully Justine, walking rapidly down the upstairs hallway. Seconds later, the person began to descend the stairs—by the sound of the footsteps, I was almost certain that it was Justine, and moments later, I could see her as she turned back towards the kitchen after reaching the bottom of the stairs.
Without saying anything to me, she walked by me, sat down in a kitchen chair, and after putting her head in her hands, she burst into tears. Completely puzzled, I walked over to the doorway in the kitchen to see if I could hear anything from upstairs. "Don't go up there!" said Justine, who was still sobbing. Returning to her, I put my hand on her shoulder and said, "What's wrong, Justine?"
She looked up at me with her tear-stained face and said, "He's dead."
"Who's dead? What are you talking about?"
"Trent! Someone shot him while he was sleeping in his bed."

However, Jesse's confidence in Justine's innocence begins to waver when he is told that the murder weapon, which was found near Trent's bed, had a silencer attached to it. Justine is arrested, and after she rejects a plea deal, the prosecutor charges her with first degree murder. The trial is an odd one, principally because it features Vanessa Evans, the daughter of Trent by a previous marriage. Vanessa describes herself as a pathological liar, and after taking the oath to testify truthfully, she immediately begins to say a number of things that leave everyone wondering who really committed the murder. This includes the members of the jury who take six days to reach a verdict.

So who actually murdered Trent Evans? Is it Justine: the elegant woman who wears the long dresses and speaks in a sweet voice? Is it Memphis, Justine's daughter, who suffered through the trauma of being violated by a sexual psychopath? Or is it Vanessa, the sassy pathological liar who seems to fear no one?