Lone Star 02 by Ellis Wesley

Author:Ellis, Wesley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Jordan Moore did not want Jessie’s name to appear in the papers. He escorted her to his well-kept, four-room apartment on Clay Street before returning to the site of the murder, to wait with Shanks’s body until the police arrived.

Jessie made coffee in the small kitchen, and then, despite the only moderate coolness of the evening, stoked a fire in the living room’s hearth. She wanted the light and cheerful crackling of the flames for companionship, not warmth.

She sat staring into the fire for about an hour before she heard Moore’s key in the lock. The slightly built detective looked haggard and worn. His tie was loosened, and his shirt front was spotted with Shanks’s blood.

“How did it all go?” Jessie asked him quietly.

“About as poorly as possible,” Moore said, wincing. “They kept asking me what he—and I—had been doing there, and all I kept saying was that Shanks was there on his own time, and that I’d received a message that my partner was in trouble at that address.”

“Did they believe you?” Jessie’s tone was worried.

“Oh, sure.” Moore laughed humorlessly. “And then I explained to them how if they were good, Saint Nick would bring them some clues for Christmas.” He shrugged off his suit jacket. “Excuse me while I slip into something a little less blood-stained ...”

Jessie watched the man trudge wearily into the bedroom. “The most ironic part,” Moore called through the partly open bedroom door, “is that I really don’t know for sure who killed him. I mean, obviously it was one of Chang’s bodyguards, but Shanks was run clear through. Chang’s men would have broken Shanks’s neck, or chopped him with a hatchet. They don’t have much use for swords.”

“It wasn’t Chang, or his men,” Jessie said.

“What?” Moore came out wearing a thick velvet robe. “What do you mean? Of course it was. Shanks was following them and got careless—”

“Greta Kahr killed him.” Jessie noticed that Moore’s legs were bare between his slippers and the knee-length hem of the robe. Was the rest of him bare, as well? What a time to think about that! Jessie scolded herself, at the same time fingering the netsuke carving on the black ribbon around her neck.

“Now, why do you think it was Greta Kahr?” Moore asked her. “Wait, I’m going to fetch some of that coffee.” He returned with a mug of the brew on a tray, along with two small glasses, and a bottle of sour-mash bourbon. “I have no brandy,” he apologized. “Or rather, it’s all gone. I had breakfast at home today, you see.”

“Oh, stop,” Jessie chided him, laughing. “You don’t really drink all that much, do you?”

“I used to,” Moore grinned, pouring them each a bourbon. “Before I left my old profession for this line of work.”

“What did you do before?”

“I was a journalist, a police reporter, actually.” Moore sat down next to Jessie on the couch, setting their whiskey on a small table nearby. “After a few years of scribbling accounts of crimes, I realized that what I hankered to do was to solve them.

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