October Fest: A Murder-by-Month Mystery by Jess Lourey

Author:Jess Lourey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: mystery, murder, humor, soft-boiled, regional, fiction, murder by month, beer, soft boiled, Octoberfest, month
Publisher: Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.
Published: 2011-01-31T23:00:00+00:00

I ran near to where he was standing, holding a bag of tomatoes. Those in the crowd armed with cameras were pointing them at him, snapping or rolling.

“How are you?” He asked when I was within speaking distance. His tone suggested we were old friends meeting for a planned coffee date.

“The pavement get uncomfortable?” I asked Randy Martineau, my parking lot guru. He was wearing the same gray and frayed clothes I’d seen him in the morning after the murder, and his BO hadn’t changed either.

He idly studied his bag of tomatoes. “I never stay too long in one place.”

“You might want to leave this one,” I said. Around me, reporters were clicking away on their handhelds. “I don’t know if it’s illegal to throw tomatoes at public figures, but it’s for sure frowned upon.”

“Oh, it’s illegal,” he said. “Especially if you hit someone. That’s why I didn’t bring the rest of my crew with me. No one else needs to go to jail. But I never do a crime if I’m unwilling to do the time.”

A heavyset reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press used that opening to jockey in and ask Randy why he’d done the crime.

He methodically brushed his free hand on his pants, leaving a wet trail of tomato residue. “Civil disobedience.”

“To what end?” Another reporter asked.

“To get heard. Representative Glokkmann does not represent me. Her opposition to health care is a danger to our democracy, and she’s sown so much ill will in the House with her polarizing ignorance that she can no longer meet the obligations of the position to which she was elected.”

His accusations echoed Webber’s. “How do you know all this?” I asked.

He looked me straight in the eye. “If you look for it, you can find it.”

The truth is out there, right? This guy radiated kookiness, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of truth in his words, or the sense that he knew something important. “Did you know Bob Webber?”

“Did I know Bob Webber.” It didn’t come across as a question or a statement. In the background, a police siren blared. We didn’t have much time.

“What were you doing in the motel parking lot on Sunday morning?”

“The truth never sleeps. We must be ever-vigilant in our pursuit of it.”

“Come on,” I said. “Give me something. Who killed Bob Webber?”

But my voice was drowned out by the multitude of questions from the other reporters, who had latched on to the possibility that this man might be connected to the murder they had originally come to town to cover. The crazy drifter espoused his political views and love for anarchy right up until he was handcuffed and shoved into the backseat of a police car. Fortunately, Deputy Wohnt wasn’t the arresting officer.

When the police car pulled away, Glokkmann appeared, a smile on her face and her hair more perfect than ever before. She looked like she’d been hit with a beauty brush rather than a tomato. She spoke loud and clear to get everyone’s attention.

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.