Reunions and Revelations in Las Vegas: A Humorous Tiffany Black Mystery by A.R. Winters

Author:A.R. Winters [A.R. Winters]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Back in the house, Maeve had already put her concern about Norman aside. I couldn’t help but remember how much she disliked him before he became her patient. It was as if, when he was injured, a switch flicked inside her from grumpy housekeeper to concerned nurse. Now that he was gone, the concerned nurse had disappeared right along with him.

I was glad it took the heat off me.

“I suppose it serves him right for putting himself in Beryl’s will.” Maeve almost sounded chirpy as she stood over a giant skillet of bacon.

“No one deserves to freeze to death, or fall off a cliff,” Uncle Joe said from the end of the long bench on one side of the kitchen table.

“Don’t they?” Maeve sounded vaguely surprised, as if Joe were presenting an opinion she hadn’t considered.

“If he murdered Beryl and put himself into her will first, then he definitely deserved it,” Roman declared. He was sitting opposite Joe.

“You’re just mad because Beryl hadn’t finished paying you,” Jini said from beside Joe.

Roman shook his head at the accusation. “No. I just think that justice has been served.”

“There’s no evidence that he killed Beryl.” Joe’s tone was still mild, but his face had fallen into an uncharacteristic frown.

Roman did not agree. “Sure there is. He was there. And the rest of us didn’t do it, so it had to have been him.” Roman looked at me for approval. He didn’t get it.

“Sorry, Roman, I just can’t see that yet. We would need some proof. And I really don’t think he was in any state to be killing anyone that night. He was concussed, he was drugged with morphine, he had hypothermia, he nearly had frostbite, and he was exhausted from wandering in the blizzard.”

“Maeve?” Roman called. “What do you think? Did he kill Beryl?”

She turned from her position over the skillet to face us. The bacon continued to sizzle behind her. “I bet he would have liked to so he could get his greedy hands on her money sooner. Lawyers like him have got no morals. None.”

Roman was nodding along, pleased for the support. “Exactly what I thought. Every weekend he came here, pretending to be nice to her. Plotting the whole time.”

“But,” continued Beryl, “with the amount of morphine I gave him, it just wasn’t possible. He didn’t move from that bed for nearly twenty-four hours.”

“But he could have, right? The concussion could have made his body ignore the effects of the morphine, couldn’t it?”

Beryl looked skeptical. “I don’t think so. It’s not a case of mind over matter. Morphine has physical effects on the body that can’t be overcome through willpower. It would be like trying to run a marathon while one of your legs was encased in concrete. With the best will in the world, you just can’t do it.”

“But…” Roman stared down at his hands on the table. “How old is your morphine? Maybe it was weak.”

Maeve shook her head. “Beryl was getting old. I replaced everything in our first aid kit last year.

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.