Washed Up: A Beach Cozy Mystery with a Female Private Investigator, Cute Dog, and Clean Romance (Sharpe & Steele Mystery Series Book 7) by Maisy Marple

Author:Maisy Marple [Marple, Maisy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CCS Publishing
Published: 2024-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

When Lucinda opened the door to her house and let herself in, she was scared nearly half to death at the sight of a man standing on her deck, staring in through the glass doors.

Steele was going bonkers, and it took Lucinda a few seconds to realize it was her father.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, sliding the door open and letting him in. Steele ran up to him and barked before licking the back of his leg.

“I found this bottle a few minutes ago. It washed up on the beach like the other one. Do you still have it?”

He put the bottle down on the table, and Lucinda grabbed the first bottle she’d gotten and put it next to the new one.

They were identical in every way. Same color, same size. They even had the same type of paper rolled up inside of them, and were stoppered at the top with the same style of cork.

“This is odd,” Lucinda mused as she retrieved some tweezers to grab the note from the new bottle.

As with the first bottle, it was a struggle to get the paper out, but after a moment of jostling and shifting, she was able to grip it and pull it through the opening at the top.

Unrolling the note, she read it.

You’ll never know the truth.

“What in the world does that mean?” She pulled the first note out again and put the two notes side by side.

He knows.

It’s over.

You’ll never know the truth.

“Do you think these notes were meant for you, pumpkin?” Harold scratched his head, trying to make heads or tails of the two messages. “Or do you think you’ve stumbled upon something that was meant for someone else?”

“That’s a great question,” Lucinda said, shaking her head and shrugging. Her eyes were focused on the words, wondering if they were somehow connected to Trent’s murder.

They sounded threatening enough to be part of the case she was working on but didn’t want to get too far ahead of herself.

“For now,” she said after a few minutes, “I’m going to hold onto them and keep them here in the kitchen. If they fit with my investigation, I’ll use them. If not, they’re an interesting conversation piece.”

Harold nodded vigorously, looking like a retired bobblehead doll. “Good instinct, princess. Say, while I’m here and you’re here, your mother wants me to ask how you liked the cookies she left for you.”

“Ugh,” Lucinda grunted. “Let me tell you who had those.” She drew her gaze to Steele, who had settled down and was now laying on the floor next to Harold’s foot.

“Really?” Harold said, raising an eyebrow that Lucinda had seen too many times in her life. She knew he was seconds away from one of Harold’s famous diatribes about how something needed to change, and he was the one to bring that change about. “You know, I’ve been saying that darn dog needs some training. One of these days he’s going to do something really bad, then where

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