Lucky Town: A Badlands Novella by Morgan Brice

Author:Morgan Brice [Brice, Morgan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781939704825
Publisher: Darkwind Press
Published: 2018-10-29T04:00:00+00:00

By the time Simon got back to the blue bungalow, he felt the strain of a busy day. It didn’t surprise him that Vic’s Hayabusa wasn’t parked in the carport. After the time off they’d spent in Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving, Vic had been working some overtime to catch up.

Murder didn’t take a holiday, not even at the beach.

Simon texted Travis to see if there had been any leads on the Sylvia Green case. He knew that Vic would tell him if Carmen learned anything new about the Nate situation. Simon hadn’t heard anything from his mother since he’d made good on his threat not to show up for Thanksgiving. He figured she would wait and try to rope him in for Christmas, something he wasn’t going to allow.

Simon pulled out the ziti casserole he had made the night before and popped it in the oven. He set out a loaf of frozen garlic bread on a tray to put in to bake later, then poured bagged lettuce into a mixing bowl and jazzed it up with olives, cut up peppers, sesame seeds, and shredded cheese. He hoped Vic would be home by the time dinner was ready, but if not, it would reheat just fine.

He grabbed a beer from the fridge and settled on the couch, watching a home improvement show that didn’t require much concentration. His phone buzzed to let him know he had email. One of the messages was from Brent.

Talked to Sylvia’s widower. They said that she had been depressed about some money problems. She was afraid of going into debt. Then she got a bad diagnosis—some kind of cancer. That got her worried about medical bills. Sylvia couldn’t get any help from regular doctors or financial advisers, so she started trying alternative solutions. One of them was a “spiritual advisor” who called himself Reverend Billy and worked out of a house in North Versailles.

Sylvia’s husband said she came home from the meeting with Reverend Billy happy and relaxed for the first time in a long while, and said she just knew things would work out. Her cancer went into remission, they received a big insurance payment when the company reversed a previous denial, and her husband got a raise and promotion.

A year later, Sylvia dropped over dead, not a mark on her, nothing wrong that an autopsy could find. Oh, and no trace of Reverend Billy. The house is empty and the sign is gone.

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