Caught in the Act by Clare Kauter

Author:Clare Kauter [Kauter, Clare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Cozy Mystery
Goodreads: 36004989
Publisher: Author
Published: 2017-08-17T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

“What now?” Topher asked when we were back in the car. We had the engine on and the air-conditioner blasting, but we were still parked across from Modern Solutions. “We should look into that gambling lead, right?”

“Right, but we don’t have much to go on,” I said. I thought for a moment. “I’ll call Victoria and see if she knows who he might have owed money to.”

I dialled Victoria with the phone on speaker and asked her if she knew who George might have gambled with. She seemed confused by my question.

“What? Do you think his gambling has something to do with what happened to him?”

I frowned. Why did that surprise her? “I’m looking into it as a possibility.”

“Oh… Well, I suppose that makes sense.”

“One of his coworkers told us that George looked like he’d been beaten up recently,” I said.

“Oh, yes. I forgot to tell you that.”

I looked across at Topher, who was listening in on the conversation. His facial expression mirrored mine, and I knew he was thinking the same thing – she just forgot to tell us that her murdered husband had been beaten up last week?

“Right,” I said.

“But I don’t think it’s his poker friends who did it,” said Victoria. “He’d never had any problems with them before.”

That didn’t mean that he couldn’t have started having problems with them, though. Especially if he’d run out of money.

“Was he having money problems?” I asked.

Victoria laughed. “No, not at all. If he’d been having money problems, I wouldn’t be so worried about being accused of killing him. After all, if he didn’t have any money left, why would I have killed him? I wouldn’t get anything out of his death.”

I guess that made sense. Unless she’d killed him to stop him spending the money… Still, I just couldn’t see her being the killer. But why hadn’t she mentioned the bruises? The thought occurred to me that maybe she was covering for someone – like maybe Rob.

“And who did you think had beaten him up, then, if not someone he gambled with?”

“I just assumed he’d had a fight with one of his mistresses,” she said cooly.

“Can you give us the names of people he gambled with, or where he went to play poker?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know,” she said. “I never took much of an interest in his card games, I’m afraid.”

“Does Rob know?”

She called out to Rob and I heard his garbled reply in the distance. Victoria relayed the message. “No, he doesn’t know either, sorry.”

When I ended the call, I turned to Topher. “What do you think?”

He sighed. “I have no idea. The way Victoria spoke about it, she didn’t seem to think that George had been beaten up all that badly. Maybe Dan the Douche was exaggerating.”

“Maybe,” I said. “We should see if we can get James to find out how badly he was beaten. He should be able to talk to the medical examiner or have a look at the autopsy report. I’ll call him.

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.