Merrily Murdered by Sonia Parin

Author:Sonia Parin [Parin, Sonia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-18T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

“Please tell me you’re not having a meltdown. If you are… Well, you can’t.”

Joshua brushed both hands across his face and gave a reluctant shrug. “Honestly, I’ve got nothing.”

Abby opened her mouth to speak and closed it.

The admission shook her. Since their first meeting, she had thought of Detective Inspector Joshua Ryan as confident and competent in his job. He had a tough job to perform and he did it with stalwart relentlessness. He could have dismissed Abby’s persistent meddling but, instead, he’d always welcomed her input.

Abby lightened her tone. “What do you mean you’ve got nothing? You always have something.”

“Not this time.”

“Pull yourself together, detective. The entire town is counting on you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. They’re depending on you. They want you to solve the case.”

“Yes, well… what they want and what they get are… Oh, whatever.”

“Did you just lose the thread?” he asked.

Abby shrieked, “It’s this heat. How can it be so persistent?” She clutched her throat. “It’s grabbed hold of me and won’t let go… And, when is the sun going to set?”

“It’s summer time, remember? The sun doesn’t go down until 9pm. Look on the bright side.”

“You’re telling me to look on the bright side?” She pushed out a weary breath. “I suppose you’re right but there’s just way too much brightness.” She clicked her fingers. “That’s it. It’s the light. I’ve never seen light so bright. It feels… It feels unfiltered.”

“Think of everyone living in Alaska. They have continuous darkness now and in summer the sun barely sets.”

“That’s right, but they don’t have to contend with the heat.” She grumbled. “At this rate, we could set ourselves up as a grumbling duet.” It was Abby’s turn to brush her hands across her face. “Let’s put our thinking caps on. We have a default to truth. Our operating assumption is that the people we are dealing with are honest.” Sighing, she added, “I read that somewhere. So, I’m going to assume everyone is lying. You want suspects? There’s a pub full of them. I just spent several hours sitting at the bar and just about everyone had an opinion about Harold Moorhead. There were also varying versions of his role in the Christmas of ’09 power outage.” Looking toward the pub, she gave Joshua a list of names of everyone who’d expressed their opinions.

“You’ve had a busy afternoon,” he said as he noted down the names in his notebook.

Abby gave a small nod. “For all we know, the killer could actually be sitting in there.”

Joshua put his notebook away and drew out his phone.

She listened as he placed a call and organized for one of his detectives to keep an eye on everyone at the pub. Disconnecting the call, he said, “Thanks. You’ve just widened the net for me. I might have to give serious thought to handing in my badge.”

It had to be the heat, Abby thought. No one could function at full capacity when the air felt too hot to inhale. “It’s the end of the day.

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