Mailboat II by Danielle Lincoln Hanna

Author:Danielle Lincoln Hanna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Suspense
Publisher: Hearth & Homicide Press, LLC
Published: 2018-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MONICA

I stormed into the detectives’ office and slapped my portfolio down on my desk. What was wrong with me? Why’d I have to go and antagonize Brandt again? Why was it so hard to simply be civil?

“Morning, Monica,” Lehman said from the next cubicle over. He leaned back in his office chair to stare at me over the rim of a coffee mug. “I thought you were off still?”

“Shove it up your ass,” I snapped, rifling through the notes in my portfolio.

As soon as I’d said it, I pulled up short and rolled my eyes skyward. Damn it. I’d forgotten to be decent yet again. God, I was failing at life.

Screw this.

I dropped into my chair and booted up my computer. “What’s happened since I was gone?” I set the yellow legal pad from my portfolio on top of my desk, taking a moment to align the edges of the pad with the laminate corner. Notes on my interview with Bailey Johnson marched across the page in well-ordered bullet points.

“Not much exciting,” Lehman said. He eased out of his chair, which groaned from years of misuse and abuse. Unaccustomed to sitting upright, it slouched permanently into a reclined position, the overstretched springs simply giving up on their strained existence. Lehman sauntered over to my desk and sat on top of the legal pad. I glared at his back-end as it dog-eared the corners of my pages. I nearly opened my mouth to bite his head off, but forced myself to bite my tongue instead. Be civil, be civil…

“Hit up Charles Hart’s kids and ex-wife,” he went on. He stared down at me. “Broke the news to them, of course. Anyway, they all said the same thing. Dear old dad was gay as the day was long, and head-over-heels for his next-door neighbor.” He shrugged, his eyes blasé. “Hence the divorce.”

Then it was true. Hart had killed Fritz and Jason in a mad bid for Roland’s attention. But was that really the end of it? Questions still dogged my thoughts. “Any leads on the accomplice?” I asked.

“Nah. Roland’s leads were all junk. Still no sign of the getaway vehicle, either. On the bright side, autopsies are today—both Jason and Charles. When we get the bullets outta them, we’ll ship ‘em off to the lab. Other than that, we’re just waiting to hear on fingerprints from the firearms and the crashed vehicle.” He blew across the surface of his coffee and took a sip.

“Well, that accomplice better have left us something.”

Lehman smirked. “A shit ton of casings. God, they were scattered on the street like acorns under an oak tree.”

“Any ID on his weapon?”

He scowled. “Those were .22 LR rimfires, Monica. I crap those after lunch.”

I lifted an eyebrow and nodded. So did I. They were cheap as dirt.

“Eh, we’ll flush him out. He can’t hide forever. So, what are you going to work on today?” he asked.

“Bailey.”

“The kid? Didn’t you already get her statement?”

“She’s gotta remember something about that accomplice.”

He gestured with his mug.

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