Fatality in F by Alexia Gordon

Author:Alexia Gordon [Gordon, Alexia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Cozy, General, African American, book club picks;Henery Press;cozy mystery series;women sleuths;amateur sleuths;beach reads;paranormal
ISBN: 9781635114621
Google: lI4svgEACAAJ
Amazon: B07L5SYDSH
Publisher: Henery Press
Published: 2019-02-25T23:00:00+00:00

Rehearsal would wait for a while. She detoured to Frankie’s rose garden. The crime scene tape had vanished but the garden still bore an air of malevolence. A blood-stained depression marred the grass in front of the ‘Sandra Sechrest’ rose. Several of the bush’s lower branches lay bent and broken, stripped of their leaves. The soil around its base bore a partial foot print. Frankie would be heartbroken when he saw it. Bad enough a man died in his garden and the murder weapon pointed the finger of suspicion at him; the damage to his prize rose rubbed salt in the wound. Like Jacobi claimed the last laugh.

Gethsemane checked beneath the birdbath and under Copernicus and in every other place where someone might have hidden a message spelled out either with actual flowers or a drawing. Nothing. Not surprising. If the flower girl hadn’t killed Jacobi but only stalked Frankie, she’d know he wasn’t at the hall. She wouldn’t leave a message he wouldn’t find and wouldn’t risk the gardaí catching her. If the flower girl murdered Jacobi, either on her own or for a paycheck, she’d be on the run. If Ellen hired her, she’d have run a lot farther—a one-way ticket to a country without extradition treaties probably accompanied the paycheck. If she killed independently, she might not have had the funds to get far. But it didn’t take much to get as far as Cork. The average school boy could manage a bus ticket with his allowance. A murderer could get lost in a city the size of Cork.

Convinced the garden held no more clues, Gethsemane returned to the parking lot. A woman waved to her from the opposite end—the new Latin teacher, Gethsemane’s initial candidate for Frankie’s secret admirer.

“Excuse me,” the pretty blonde called.

Gethsemane waited by Frankie’s car. “Hello, Verna,” she said when the woman caught up to her.

“That’s Frankie’s car, isn’t it? Have you seen him? Is he all right?”

“He’s fine. He’s, uh, gone to ground for a while.”

“Can’t say’s I blame him. That dreadful Inspector Sutton suspecting him of murder. I know Frankie’s mercurial but he’d never stab someone in the back, figuratively or literally.”

“Sutton talked to you?”

“Yeah. Wanted to know if I sent Frankie flowers. Practically accused us of having an affair.” Verna blushed. “We aren’t, regardless of the faculty lounge gossip. The odd lunch at the Rabbit hardly equals an affair.”

So, the Latin teacher knew what people said about her and Frankie. Rumor spread through the St. Brennan’s faculty lounge almost as fast as it spread through the pub.

“Would you tell Frankie I asked about him?” Verna asked. “And tell him I know he didn’t do it.”

“Of course.” Gethsemane moved to get in the car when she caught sight of the Dunmullach Dispatch folded under Verna’s arm.

Verna noticed her gaze. “Have you seen it? I swear the Dispatch is getting to be more and more of a rag every day.” She unfolded the paper.

Roderick Jacobi’s face stared up from the front page. The headline read, “Murder! Pharma CEO and Amateur Horticulturalist Stabbed.

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