Peril, Plots, and Puppies by Maggie Pill

Author:Maggie Pill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cozy mystery, sister detectives, female sleuths, Michigan mysteries, dog rescue
Publisher: Gwendolyn Books
Published: 2018-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-eight

Barb

WE WERE BACK FROM WARD River by one, and Retta dropped me off at home. Though I still had qualms about poking into the Deline murder, I was beginning to get pulled in. Frannie Habedank had given us a reason to get involved, and I felt a compulsion to disprove her outrageous contention the Grammar Nazi was guilty. If we could add to Rory’s information that was good too, as long as he got the credit.

Retta said she had things to do, so I took my own car to interview Oscar Farwell. I hoped he’d be able to tell me about Frannie’s relationship with Deline. As Retta kept repeating, she was a logical suspect with opportunity and no firm alibi. She’d hired us, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone ranted about finding a killer in order to hide her own guilt.

I drove out to the welding shop Farwell and his father owned through fat, fluffy snowflakes that swirled before me, blurring my vision and leaving a dusting on the roadside. They weren’t likely to stay long, since daytime temperatures were predicted to be in the forties. Locals had begun asking each other if winter was ever going to arrive.

The Farwell welding shop was situated a mile off M-23 on a dirt road that hadn’t been graded in a while. Snow camouflaged the potholes, and I soon felt like James Bond’s martini: chilled and well-shaken. On the way I passed a driveway where the mailbox said B. Farwell. Slowing, I peered at a well-kept house set some distance back from the road. A truck I recognized as Bruce’s sat in the open garage. The elder Farwell had a new home, removed from the business.

The shop itself was a half-mile beyond that, on the other side of a stand of maples. The cement-block structure sat next to a small frame house that I guessed had once been the family home. A sign out front said, F&F Welding. Metal Repair and Fabrication.

Oscar Farwell could not have murdered Steven Deline. He’d been in the company of a whole bar full of people on the outskirts of town between seven and eleven-thirty on Monday night. By all accounts he’d been as quiet and unflappable as always that night, shooting “good stick” as his pool team competed against league rivals. Once the win was in the books, Oscar had had one last beer with his teammates then left for home. While no one could say what time he’d actually arrived because he lived alone in the house next to the shop, it was clear he hadn’t brained Deline with a blunt object at eight p.m.

Despite the cold, the bay door at the front was halfway open. Wearing a tattered coverall, Oscar was at work mending a trailer hitch, his hands sure and steady with the torch. His mask blocked his peripheral view, which gave me a few seconds to evaluate him before he realized I was there. He had a long frame that appeared welded together at the joints, like the metals he worked with.

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