Furballs and Felonies by DeAnna Drake

Author:DeAnna Drake [Drake, DeAnna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tule Publishing
Published: 2024-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Alley

Luna and I watched from the Sweet Spot’s back door as Olivia paced the area where we’d found Paige Olson’s body. She pulled the black coat tight across her chest and tugged the sides of the beanie over her ears like she was trying to hide her identity, but the blond braid trailing down her back was a dead giveaway.

“What do you think she’s doing over there?” Luna whispered.

“Only one way to find out.” I grabbed the trash bag from her and headed toward the woman. When I opened the outside bin’s lid to toss in the rubbish, the sound caught her attention.

“Hi, Olivia,” I said. “Are you looking for something?”

“No, I was, uh…” She stammered and stared back in surprise. She fidgeted as I approached her.

“I wanted to leave these flowers,” she blurted as soon as I could see them. Purple cellophane wrapped a bouquet of multicolored Gerbera daisies propped beside the steps. “I hope that’s all right. I can’t stop thinking about what happened here. It’s so awful. We can’t even bury her. The coroner won’t release her body.” Her hands flew to her face, and she sniffed back tears.

A knot caught in my throat. Even if this woman’s cousin wasn’t a saint, she deserved better. “Of course it’s all right. I’m sorry about the delay. Sometimes that happens during an investigation.” Since this was my third homicide investigation, I could speak with some authority. “It’s only because they want to find your cousin’s killer. They want justice done. We all do.”

Olivia wiped tears from her cheeks. “I know, and I appreciate it. It’s just hard.”

Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything harder.

“I wish there was more I could do,” she said. “I feel so helpless.”

“That’s completely understandable. It might not feel like it, but you’ve already done your part. You’ve talked to Nick, I mean Detective Devon, right?”

She nodded and sniffled again.

“That’s really all you can do. It’s up to him and the rest of the police department to figure out what happened.”

“I hope they do.” Olivia gave me a hesitant look, as if she’d just remembered she’d laid the blame on my ex-fiancé.

Nick would tell me not to get involved. Everybody would. But I couldn’t help myself. “Do you really think Mason had something to do with it?”

Olivia’s eyes widened. “Where did you hear that?”

“Nowhere,” I lied. “I assumed because you clammed up just now.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders relaxed a little. “It’s not my place to say. If you two—”

“There’s nothing between the two of us. That was over before I left Elk Pass.” If I wasn’t so blind, I would have realized it should have been over long before that.

She relaxed a little more. “I don’t know, but he spent a lot of time with Paige. He really liked her.”

“Was the feeling mutual?”

She hesitated. Then, almost apologetically, she said, “Sure, to a degree. My mother called Paige a free spirit. She liked the men she dated, and she seemed to have a way of making each of them feel…”

“Special? Like they were the only one?”

“Something like that.

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