Betrayal of the Court: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Other Realm Book 6) by Heather G. Harris

Author:Heather G. Harris [Harris, Heather G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2023-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

I re-jigged all the information I’d got from Elvira and Roscoe in my head. On my computer system, there didn’t seem to be anything to link each victim, but in reality they all had two things in common: they weren’t well liked, and they had supposedly done bad things. I’d even go so far as to say some of them were actively hated. We had two alleged rapists, an embezzler and a drug dealer; none of them were going to win philanthropy awards any time soon.

What we had on our hands was a vigilante – but why would a vigilante kill them all by bludgeoning? The weapon used was a baseball bat or something similar, so it wasn’t like an ogre’s mace. The victims were all Other but the deaths were all … ordinary. Non-magical.

Something was itching in the back of my mind. I emailed Elvira and asked her to send me any details she had on Hugo and the family that had accused him and subsequently disappeared. She seemed to be embracing the spirit of co-operation, bar that little omission about the investigation into Clarissa; maybe she hadn’t dug it up or hadn’t thought it was relevant. I’d give her the benefit of the doubt. I also asked if she could dig into who benefitted from Derek Ives’ death. He had apparently won millions so who would inherit them? According to his file, he had no next of kin. Unless he’d had a Will, the Crown was going to cash in.

There was a knock on the door: Mike. I closed the laptop and called for him to come in. ‘Here, this came for you.’ He handed me an envelope. ‘And Emory is free to see you now, just for a minute before he takes the Elders to lunch.’

How kind of Emory to fit me in, I thought somewhat ungenerously.

I took the envelope from Mike. It was an A4 brown envelope with no postmark, which meant that somebody had handed it in at the castle. Something told me to be careful, so I grabbed Glimmer and used it to slice open the envelope.

I slid out the letter. Uh-oh – red flag. It was made up of various letters cut out from magazines and newspapers. Amateur criminal hour: anyone could type and print a letter these days, so going to such ridiculous lengths was telling. This wasn’t a professional. The letter said: Jinx, stop investigating the dead or you’re next.

When I showed it to Mike, he swore loudly and vociferously. ‘The envelope was hand delivered,’ I pointed out. ‘No stamp.’

‘I’ll see what I can find out. Maybe there’ll be some CCTV footage of the person handing it in.’

‘Maybe,’ I agreed, though it didn’t seem likely. So far the killer had avoided CCTV cameras. It didn’t seem likely that he – or she – would slip up on a postal run, but I could hope. The letter was certainly amateurish. ‘Let’s not mention this to Emory,’ I suggested. ‘He worries, and he has enough on his plate right now.

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