Not So Merry Murder by Amabel Daniels

Author:Amabel Daniels [Daniels, Amabel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-10T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

I didn’t sleep a wink. I didn’t even try to.

The first thing I did after Knox left was change out of my elf suit and wash it. Long overdue. Dressed in jeans and a Henley shirt that had seen better days but would never be more comfortable, I started tidying up my apartment. As I went through the mess, it became clear to me that whoever had come in and trashed my place had no clear objective.

Other than leave that gun.

Was it an obvious setup? Marlena’s murderer was trying to bluntly point the finger at me by leaving the gun here?

Whoever had broken in hadn’t come for vandalism or theft. Nothing was graphically spray-painted or destroyed. No gang signatures. None of my possessions were taken. Just spilled cereal, busted dinnerware, torn couch cushions and pillows, and messy clothes. Even still, that was a handful to clean up.

When I collected the broken Elvis lampstand pieces, I could only think about the gun that had been waiting there. Well, I wondered about it.

Who brought it here? The killer, or an accomplice?

Why try to shift the attention to me, when my prints wouldn’t show up on it?

Still, I found it strange that the serial number on that gun happened to match one of the firearms the police had already marked in their system as previously stolen by Damon. But even that was old news. So, did whoever used this gun know Damon? Or was it a coincidence that another person had gotten hold of a hot item in the realm of stolen weaponry out there?

One good note, at least, was that Knox had explained at the station how the ballistics were spot-on, so it wasn’t just some freakishly accurate gun knowledge he’d been working on. There was another shot that was fired at the tree in the hut, striking through an ornament, and then the one that killed Marlena. The shot that cleared through the ornament was lodged in the floor of the hut, and finding that allowed for a perfect correspondence to the gun in my apartment. It was a positive detail in the sense it wasn’t a random wacko who’d broken in to leave a stolen firearm on my table.

For hours, I went through my home. Cleaning up the broken bits, wiping clean the dust and debris, sweeping up numerous shards of plates. Since everything was already in disarray and chaotic, I gave the teeny studio a deep disinfecting, treating the bathroom and kitchen to some extra heavy-duty TLC as well. Once the room reeked of bleach and hinted at lemon, and my hands were pruny from the cleaning, did I stop. Morning had heralded by then.

“May as well start the day.”

At the sign of dawn, I took a smidgen of pride in the fact I’d stayed home all night, on my own, like a big girl. Just like I knew I could. It would have been so damn easy to give in and go home with Knox last night. Safer, too, maybe.

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