Murder by the Glass by Teresa Inge

Author:Teresa Inge [Saxon, Teresa Inge and Yvonne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHIMERA

by Libby Hall

“Hey Ivy! You hear they found Big Jed Powell dead in Sayers Junkyard?” Lee Dory asked me while I was wiping glasses. “I heard his head looked like a busted up watermelon.”

The news was three days old, so I’d already heard it from a dozen other people. When you work in a small-town bar most of what you hear is crap, but when you hear one thing and then another, you start to get a picture of what’s really happening. So as usual, I was taking it all in.

I shrugged and jerked my head down the bar to where Hollis Sims, my boyfriend and the town Sheriff, was hunched over a glass of Maker’s (three fingers, straight). He stopped in sometimes to get information, but usually just to unwind after a long day. For the most part people left him alone. The fact that Hollis had just ordered Maker’s instead of his usual Beam told me he’d been at the scene again.

“You might want to keep it down,” I said to Lee. “Hollis has had a bad week.”

Lee glanced at Hollis and shrugged. He had already drunk four beers since knocking off from his construction job, and God knows how many in the truck on the way to the bar. Slim chance he was gonna tone down the volume.

“Well, nobody’ll be sad to see that SOB gone,” he said, his voice carrying across the room. “The trick’ll be to figure out who did it. Half this town would give their eyeteeth to see Big Jed pushin’ daisies. I heard they already hauled Jemma and Ricky down for questions.”

I always felt sorry for Jemma Powell, Big Jed’s wife. Back in the day, I heard Big Jed could be charming when he wanted to be, wearing a leather jacket and riding his fixed-up Indian motorcycle instead of a truck like the rest of the boys. Story was that Jemma came home from a date with Jed looking like she’d been doing more than holding hands, and those brothers of hers tracked Jed out by the lake and beat the snot out of him. Jemma and Big Jed broke up for a while after that, but later on he got Jemma pregnant. She moved in with him and had Ricky when she was seventeen. For a while she seemed happy. She’d be walking around town, doing errands and talking to people. Folks even thought maybe being a daddy would settle Big Jed down, but Jemma looked old and tired by the time she had her second son, Bobby. She must have been around nineteen. I was young, so it was a long time before I clued in to why she wore sunglasses on a rainy day, and hardly ever wore short sleeves.

I’m not saying Jemma killed him, but you never know.

I’ve worked at the Green Door for a long time and my best friend’s a social worker, so I’ve picked up a thing or two. First, people’s drinks reflect who they

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