Easter Basket Murder by Leslie Meier

Author:Leslie Meier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2023-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Good Friday, 1996

It was only Hayley’s first week working as a teller at Bar Harbor All Citizens Bank and she was already going to be late. She had stayed up late baking peanut butter oatmeal Easter cookies for her co-workers and fell asleep on the couch in the small one-bedroom apartment she shared with her new husband, Danny. The apartment was located above the Rexall drugstore on Main Street. They had only been married a few months right out of high school and were facing the responsibilities of adulthood without financial help from their parents.

Danny, who had begged his parents to pay for his bartending school tuition and promised a quick return on their investment, had surprised everyone by actually finishing the course and receiving a bona fide certificate. Even Hayley, his devoted young wife, thought he would get bored and drop out but he had stuck with it. And with his engaging personality, Danny even managed to land a job tending bar in the afternoon at the popular local watering hole the Thirsty Whale (years before Hayley’s brother Randy bought it and rechristened it Drinks Like a Fish).

But unfortunately, true to form, Danny had been promptly fired by the boss during his second shift for sneaking free cocktails, with top-shelf booze no less, to all his regular drinking buddies. So now, like it or not, at the ripe old age of eighteen, Hayley was the sole breadwinner of the family.

Hayley had never been particularly good at math so working in a bank was hardly a natural fit, but she had managed to make it through the training period with little difficulty, and was now muddling through with check cashing, deposits, withdrawals, transfers, loan payments, cashier’s checks, and opening and closing of accounts. She kept telling herself that this was simply a temporary situation until she could figure out what she really wanted to do with her life.

Danny had been so distressed by his sudden termination, he had commiserated with too many beers the night before, passing out early. Hayley slept on the couch to avoid being kept awake all night with Danny’s deafening snoring, which was a side effect when he drank too much alcohol. Unfortunately, the couch was out of earshot of her alarm in the bedroom. When Hootie & the Blowfish began playing on her clock radio indicating it was time to rise and shine, a bleary-eyed, hungover Danny had testily reached out from underneath the covers and pressed the snooze button before drifting back to sleep. When the morning sun began shining through the living room blinds, finally waking Hayley up, she suddenly realized it was twenty minutes past eight and she had to be at the bank by eight thirty. She skipped her shower and makeup routine in order to quickly iron a wrinkled blouse and box up the cookies she had baked the previous evening before dashing out the door, annoyed that Danny had blissfully been able to sleep through the pandemonium of her running around frantically trying to get ready for work.

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