Cookie Dough Killer by Summer Prescott

Author:Summer Prescott [Prescott, Summer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cozy, Culinary
Goodreads: 38594036
Publisher: Summer Prescott Books
Published: 2018-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

* * *

“Isn’t this chick supposed to be rich?” Fiona wrinkled her nose at Allivia Dunham’s corpse on the table.

“So?” Tim replied, his pre-autopsy examination just beginning.

“So, aren’t you the least bit curious about why this rich chick is dressed in rags that smell like they’ve been used to clean someone’s dog kennel?” she crossed her arms.

“It was done post-mortem,” the mortician muttered, as though that explained everything.

“How do you know that?” Fiona frowned.

Tim sighed and shook his head, disappointed in his protégé. “Look at the photos, for goodness sake, you’re the one who took them.”

“Okay,” Fiona stared hard at the photos from the scene, which were spread out on a table across the room. “I’m clearly not seeing what you saw,” she pursed her lips, perplexed.

“Look at her clothing,” he commanded, still examining the body. “Even though she was clearly posed, her clothing is all rucked up and twisted in a manner that could only have been from dressing her post-mortem, while she sat in the chair.”

Fiona bent closer to the photos. “Oh,” she said in a small voice, high color rising in her cheeks at having missed something so obvious. She cleared her throat and assumed an air of nonchalance to cover her embarrassment. “Okay, fine. But why would someone do that?” she asked.

“DNA,” Tim replied shortly.

“DNA? What do you mean?”

“Did you leave your brain at home this morning?” Tim inquired, looking at Allivia’s mouth with a magnifying glass.

“Apparently so. Please, enlighten me,” Fiona mocked her boss.

“If the attacker left DNA on the victim’s original outfit, it could tie them to the crime, so the smart thing to do would be to dress her in something that hadn’t been involved in the crime. The smell indicates that there may be…other DNA present on the clothing, which could potentially throw off investigators,” he explained impatiently.

“Wow, that’s brilliant,” she breathed.

“All in a day’s work,” Tim commented.

“I didn’t mean your deduction was brilliant, I meant that the killer was,” Fiona rolled her eyes.

“Maybe not,” Tim spoke in a hushed voice, reaching for a swab.

“What? What did you find?” Fiona dashed to his side, recognizing his tone.

“The killer may have left his own DNA behind,” Tim ran the swab across Allivia’s upper lip.

“How?”

“Whoever killed her may have kissed her. See the smudged lines of her lipstick? If we can recover some of the kisser’s saliva, we may be able to provide a lead on her killer.”

“Whoa,” Fiona breathed, peering more closely.

“This was definitely a personal crime,” Tim mused, moving the magnifying glass down to Allivia’s neck, where angry marks blossomed beneath an odd pink chiffon scarf.

“Why, because she was kissed?”

“No. We don’t actually know that whomever kissed her is actually the person who killed her. What makes this look very personal is the fact that whoever did this wanted to look into her eyes as she died. She wasn’t strangled from behind, as is the case in most strangulation. The killer looped the scarf around her neck and pulled the ends from the front.

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.