Maggie and the Empty Noose by Barbara Cool Lee

Author:Barbara Cool Lee [Lee, Barbara Cool]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pajaro Bay Publishing

The dog whined a little when the plane took off. It was clearly not a sensation he was comfortable with, so Maggie patted him, and then let him climb up on the plush leather seat next to her.

He stuck out one bony leg so he could rest his paw on her lap. She ran her fingers through the feathers along the back of his leg, and he sighed, then closed his eyes.

She pulled out her bead project, a left-twisting peyote stitch rope bracelet, and started to work on it. The gold beads would form a curving spine against the deep blue seed beads, once she got past the first few rows that tended to curl up into a big knot. It was a simple, repetitive pattern, a perfect project to work on while she thought about things.

And she had things to think about. She was still determined to figure out who had murdered Olivia. Reese may be off the hook, but she was determined to see the real criminal brought to justice.

But there were too many suspects, and at the same time, too few. If almost everyone had been home asleep with no witnesses to confirm their alibi, that meant anyone in town, and particularly anyone in the 43 houses along The Row, could be a suspect. But no one in particular stood out.

Olivia had been on the beach, which meant that, most likely, her killer had come that way, too. Technically, the beach in front of The Row was public land, and anyone could walk there. The tabloid hack who had come up the beach steps to bother the Zimmer children yesterday was proof of that. But it wouldn't be easy to get there. Casablanca was in the very center of the string of beach houses, and she guessed it would be about a half-mile from the nearest public access point to get to that spot. It wasn't that easy to walk on sand, especially at night, in thick fog.

So it was safe to say Olivia's meeting with her killer wasn't a random encounter with some stranger who was just wandering around on the beach. It had to be planned. That didn't narrow it down too much, since the killer had gone to a lot of effort to stage the scene. A murderer that determined would not be deterred by a strenuous beach walk. So she was back to thinking it could be anyone who was in Carita at the time.

Olivia's rental house was at the far end of The Row, a good half-mile from Casablanca. Shane had noticed nothing amiss when he walked over from Olivia's house to Casablanca that morning, so there couldn't have been any obvious signs of a struggle on the beach, though that kind of proof would be hard to find in the constantly changing sands. And the fog had still been thick.

She would have to leave that kind of forensic sifting of evidence to the professionals. But her instincts told her Olivia had

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