A Death in Devon (Vintage Martin Vintage Cozy Mysteries Book 1) by Shéa MacLeod

Author:Shéa MacLeod [MacLeod, Shéa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: vintage mystery, Murder mystery, retro mystery, traditional mystery, whodunnit
Publisher: Sunwalker Press
Published: 2019-06-26T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

“Come now, that seems a bit much, old girl,” Freddy said as everyone else stared at Lil in shock.

I could understand being upset about a stolen heirloom. Even wanting the person responsible to pay. But wanting them to hang? That seemed a bit over the top. I made a personal note to never get on Lil’s bad side.

“I don’t think so at all,” she said, her cheeks reddening. “These people, they take advantage. How dare they think they have a right to take what isn’t theirs. They should pay!”

“I agree,” Mary said with a tipsy giggle. “To making them pay!” She raised her glass in mock salute.

“What would you do if you ran into burglar?” Simon asked Lil curiously. He seemed completely unperturbed by her outburst.

“Why, I’d bash him on the head with a fire poker,” she said.

It sounded like she meant it. Good grief, these people were bloodthirsty. Or at least Lil was. Everyone else seemed to laugh it off except for Raymond Frain who looked unaccountably nervous. Then a look came over his face, one of understanding as if a lightbulb had just gone off. I swear I heard him mutter, “That would be too easy.”

Interesting. Could he then be the thief? Or perhaps know something about the burglaries? Or maybe he was simply referring to something he was writing.

I decided to ask him about it as soon as possible but didn’t get a chance. He excused himself early and disappeared to his room. Since the rest were getting increasingly drunk and loud, I, too, excused myself, though I took a detour on the way to my room.

Raymond’s room was down the hall perpendicular to mine, but the light was already off. I hesitated, then decided I could always speak to him in the morning.

I found Tippy snoozing on the bed.

“No dogs on the furniture, Tippy!” I shooed him off, and he gave me a very dirty look for it. A look which I completely ignored.

My room was overly warm and smelled a bit of dog, so I opened the window and let in the fresh spring breeze. The air was redolent with the sweetness of wisteria. A night bird called to its mate while in the distance a train whistled mournfully. Still, my brain was too busy trying to work out what was going on with Lil, Raymond, the burglaries. It took forever to fall asleep, but at last I nodded off.

It felt like I’d only been asleep mere minutes when I started awake. A glance at the clock showed it was six in the morning. The sky was just turning that gunmetal gray right before dawn and a bird was singing an annoyingly incessant five notes over and over. Except that wasn’t what woke me up. It wasn’t what had my heart racing against my ribcage.

Tippy stood, lips pulled back, ears pointed. A slight growl emerged from his throat. Whatever it was had disturbed him as well.

Groggily, I tried to recall what it was. A scream.

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.