Boiling Over by Thea McAlistair

Author:Thea McAlistair [McAlistair, Thea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NineStar Press, Lgbt, Gay, Historical, Mystery, cozy mystery, age gap, established couple, Mental Illness, anxiety, PTSD, private detective, New England
Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

I had to choke my panic down when I woke up to an empty house. I knew Sev had promised to take Crista to church, and a note on the kitchen table announced he’d taken Pearl with them. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Had he brought her with him so I could be left to sleep? Had she asked to come? Had he dragged her there in a fit of spite? I put the note down. No, not spite. Unlike Bella, he would never make Pearl a leverage point.

So, I would be alone for a few hours. I could write or gather my thoughts about where my relationship was going or any number of rational things. But Bella was still sitting in Kelly’s cells and me lounging around wasn’t going to get her out. And the longer she was in, the twitchier Sev was going to get. So, I washed up faster than I’d thought was possible and marched back out the door. The destination, the police station.

It wasn’t that I was worried about Bella… Fine, I was a little worried about her. When I’d left her, she hadn’t struck me as stable emotionally. And why should she have been? Her husband was only a few days in the ground, and she was locked up on false charges.

Charges that probably wouldn’t even make it through indictment, now that I’d had some time to think.

So, why would Kelly even bother? He’d shown up at the house with armed backup only about a half hour after we’d seen him, which meant he had been planning on dragging me or Sev or both somewhere against our will. To me, the action said he needed a scapegoat more than a culprit, preferably someone who wasn’t from town. Had Bella just been the unlucky one? Or had she provoked him on purpose to keep his eyes off us?

Well, she was a criminal. I had to give Kelly that. And she was hiding Lord knew what about the Reeds and possibly even this mysterious James Smith character. The trick, though, would be convincing her to tell me the truth.

The police station was open, thankfully, but Kelly wasn’t there. The desk was occupied by the bald officer, the one who had almost shot Bella for daring to defend herself. He was reading a newspaper. As I got closer, I realized there was something behind the paper. A girly magazine maybe? The woman in the picture I saw definitely had less clothing than was generally considered appropriate.

His head shot up at my approach, and he closed the newspaper, careful to fold the pornography inside. “What’d’ya want?”

“I’d like to see Mrs. Ferri, please,” I said.

He chuckled. “What do you think this is, a movie palace? You show up and say what you want to see?”

Thank God I’d gotten some solid sleep because otherwise, his snide comment would have sent me over the edge, and I’d have been with Bella in the cells whether I liked it or not.

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