Murder Most Fowl: A Swansneck Village Mystery (Swansneck Village Cozy Mystery Series Book 1) by V S Vale

Author:V S Vale [Vale, V S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penland Press
Published: 2018-05-20T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Next morning, I dashed into the hotel washroom and frothed the sweet smelling soap onto my hands. Oh, the pleasure of it. I hadn’t noticed I’d become a sanitization freak in the years since my childhood fondling the pigeons. But now, I’d become somewhat paranoid. I couldn’t handle many more days of this. I must chase down Hilda to ask if there’d been any progress with Billy. A final hand-over day had to be on the horizon.

The mind-numbing or, depending on your point of view, soothing, music floated through the air. Having entered a toilet stall, I decided it was mind-numbing.

Hearing someone enter the ladies room, I headed to the basin once more to wash my hands, only to realise the newcomer was Kim.

She stood at the mirror, re-arranging the scarf about her neck. She hurried her movements as I approached, but in her haste, the scarf slipped through her fingers and unravelled.

Her appearance shocked me. Her throat was a mass of purple bruises.

“Kim!” I exclaimed, whirling to face her. “What on earth happened to you?”

She attempted once more to re-tie the scarf but became flustered and fretful. Tears welled up in her eyes. In exasperation, she dropped the ends of the scarf.

“Oh Jenny,” she sobbed, “I can’t go on like this.”

She turned away from the wash basins and collapsed onto one of the padded chairs near the makeup mirrors.

“What is it?” I pleaded, never having seen her in such a state.

I reached for the complimentary tissues and pushed them into her hand. After a few more deep sobs she dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

“I can’t keep this up,” she said with a heavy sigh. “I have to tell someone, and I can’t tell the police.”

“What on earth is wrong, and who did this?” I edged the scarf away from the side of her neck. The bruising was awful. She’d done an amazing job of hiding it so far—there’d been no clue.

“Jack did it,” she whispered, taking a deep breath, aware she’d have to tell me more after dropping a bombshell like that.

“It was Jack? But how… when?” Her disclosure was such a surprise that I asked stupid questions, pointless because he was dead—so it had to be before Friday evening. But frankly, I was just making noises while my mind caught up with my voice.

Kim sniffed into the tissue once more, and I grabbed a replacement for her. She calmed down and regained her self-control, then swivelled in her seat. I recognised her earnest expression from our youth when we had a secret to share.

“Jenny, you don’t understand what I’ve been going through,” she began, taking another steadying breath. “Jack has been… was,” she corrected, “demanding things of me.” She looked down and picked at her fingernails. “He threatened me…”

“To do what? Why would he hurt you like this? He was your boyfriend!”

“Early in our relationship, we were fine. But then he had money problems—and he came up with an idea.” She met my gaze. “You must believe me, Jen, he made me do it.

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