Murder in an Irish Bookshop by Carlene O'Connor

Author:Carlene O'Connor [O'Connor, Carlene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2020-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Twenty minutes later Siobhán and Macdara stood in front of Deirdre’s room, suited up in booties and gloves. The laptop in the middle of Deirdre’s bed wasn’t the only new addition to the room since they’d last entered. On the bedside table were three of Lorcan Murphy’s westerns, two of Dead Elf on a Shelf, Nessa Lamb’s Musings on a Hill, and no less than five installments of The Dragon Files, by Michael O’Mara. On the other bedside table sat ten copies of Deirdre’s latest book, Melodies.

A long period of silence ticked by as Siobhán and Macdara stared at the books and the laptop.

Siobhán was the first to break the silence. “Do you think whoever stole these didn’t realize we had already been in the room and so they put them back?”

“The crime scene tape on the door hasn’t been disturbed,” Macdara said.

“Good point.” Unlike some motels, this one did not have any adjoining rooms. They checked the bathroom and confirmed that the window was still nailed shut.

“We never followed up on this,” Siobhán said. “We should check at the hardware shop to see if any of our visitors bought nails or a hammer.”

“I don’t think our killer would be that obvious,” Macdara said.

“But sometimes they are.”

“I’ll add it to the list,” Macdara said as they returned to the main room. “But that window was nailed shut the last time we visited. And the crime scene tape hasn’t been disturbed.” He folded his arms and scanned the room again. “How did the killer get in?”

“It’s a mystery.” Siobhán picked up one of Lorcan’s books. It was not signed. She quickly went through the rest. None of them were autographed. “Let’s assume these belong to Deirdre. Why did she bring all of these here?”

“Oppo research?” Macdara suggested. “Look what I found,” he said, gesturing to piles of notebooks near the laptop. “The killer is trying to bury us in red herrings. I do not like this one bit.”

Cunning. They still had to process this new information, treat it as evidence, and the killer knew that. Was he taunting them? Or simply a professional at throwing up smoke screens? “Is the laptop password protected?”

Macdara opened the screen. “Tis.” Siobhán gravitated to the notebooks; there were three of them. She opened the first. There, in neat handwriting, on the very first page, Deirdre had jotted down passages from other authors’ books:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.