Single Elimination: A Cozy Mystery (Brenna Battle Book 4) by Monday Laney

Author:Monday, Laney [Monday, Laney]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Cozy Mystery
Publisher: Cozy Clue Press
Published: 2016-02-23T05:00:00+00:00

16

I followed Walter at a distance. He kept mostly to alleys, as though he didn’t want to be seen either. Whenever he emerged onto a street proper, he sped up even though the streets were mostly empty. I hoped he knew where he was going. It looked like we had crossed over from Japan Town. The shops and restaurants had a different look and the signs changed from Japanese to Chinese.

Walter turned a corner into another alley. I paused and peeked around to see where he was headed. Nowhere, apparently. Walter ducked under the eaves. He took out his phone and started texting. From the alley came the aroma of fish, pepper, ginger, and cardamom. Not quite Chinese. I sniffed, trying to place the smell. Maybe some sort of Asian fusion cuisine? No, this seemed like a more traditional area.

Walter had his back turned, and I dashed into the alley and behind a stack of pallet boards on the opposite wall. Judging from the muffled kitchen sounds coming from inside and the steamy smells wafting from the vents, Walter was at the back door to one of the many restaurants in the International District.

In a few seconds, the door eased open. “Come. Hurry,” I heard a woman say.

But before I could slip out far enough to see her, Walter had ducked inside. What now? Wait for Walter to come back out? Go back to the dojo?

A car pulled up to the end of the alley and a young man got out and said something to the driver—in Vietnamese? Laotian? He swaggered into the alley. I tried to make myself invisible. I didn’t like the look of him—shaved hair, baggy pants, tattoos. Everything about him said gang. In fact, he had the very same look as some Cambodian mafia types I’d run into while training in California.

The young man scowled as he shoved open the same door Walter had just gone through. He shouted something to the people inside and a woman, maybe the same woman who’d called Walter in, shouted back.

Okay, so maybe I was in just a little bit over my head here. Cambodian mafia? How could Walter be associated with them? Did he have a girlfriend on the side? Or…he was crooked. Walter was from Bonney Bay, but had he worked there his whole police career? What if he’d started out in Seattle? He could’ve made some unsavory connections, especially if he’d been working vice. I didn’t think I could take another crooked cop in Bonney Bay, and I knew that would just about kill Will.

I couldn’t just stand around. What could I possibly find out standing out here in the rain? I knelt down by the vent, trying to catch a snippet of conversation, hopefully in English. All I got was an earful of gushing air and a sickeningly strong burst of kitchen exhaust. There was a window that was propped open a crack, but it was slightly too high. I grabbed a discarded crate and plunked it under the window, then climbed up.

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.