Haunting Investigation by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Author:Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Clear Toast Publications

TWENTY-THREE

ON LOWENTHAL’S SUGGESTION, POPPY TOOK A TAXI TO HIS HOUSE, HER STORY tucked into a file in her briefcase. All the way there, she thought over what Inspector Loring had told her when she had ‘phoned him upon her return from the Moncriefs’ house: there was no new information on the Moncrief case, but talking with Stacy might change that, and the Knott case was just getting underway; the coroner had not yet released any details other than it was a homicide, which, Wyman had said, was obvious to a blind man. This had brought her nothing more than a grunt from Lowenthal, the demand that she present her story and herself at his home as soon as possible, and added the expectation that she would have more for Monday’s edition, with the unspoken warning that there had better be some kind of break in one of the cases.

“Sure, boss,” she had told him; sitting in the taxi, she felt she was treading on very thin ice, and by the time she arrived at Lowenthal’s house, she was nervous. This would be a test that she was not confident that she was prepared for, and she had so much at stake. As she paid the cabby, she gave him fifty cents extra, and asked him to wait for twenty minutes at the most.

The cabby squinted up at her, taking his measure of her and the nature of the neighborhood around him. “Make it a dollar and I will,” he said, speaking around his cigarette. “Twenty minutes, but not one second longer.”

“That’s fine,” Poppy said, taking her briefcase and her purse before getting out of the cab, and approaching the house in the fading afternoon light.

The porch was small, railed in decorative cast iron from seventy years ago, and painted a dull-red; Poppy surmised that this was the house bought by Lowenthal’s immigrant grandparents, an example of family ties that she found unlike Lowenthal at the office. Taking stock of the rest of the house, she saw that it was carefully maintained, with red shutters on the windows, and relatively recent paint of a dark-buff shade. The door was the same red color as the shutters, and boasted a large, brass knocker, which Poppy used, mentally rehearsing her explanation of what she had written.

“You made good time,” Cornelius Lowenthal declared by way of welcome as he opened the door; he was in a lounging jacket that was a bit too small for his barrel chest, and for a moment, Poppy was apprehensive; Lowenthal’s next order stilled her worries. “Come in and let me have a look at your piece. I don’t want to be late for the deadline. I’ve told them to hold three inches for you.” As reassuring as this was, there was an air of skepticism about him that drained most of her closely held courage.

She stepped into a small entryway, and noticed that the parlor on the right had two lights shining already. “Where would you like me

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.