The Connecticut Corpse Caper by Tyler Colins

Author:Tyler Colins [Colins, Tyler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Creativia
Published: 2016-08-12T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

Nancy Drew's spirit must have seized my soul, because an overwhelming desire to snoop surged through me like a menopausal hot-flash (such as the ones my mother had complained about the preceding year). I wasn't exactly sure what it was I was searching for, but nosing around became priority number one.

Thomas Saturne's bedroom was first on the agenda. Yes, we'd combed through it as a team and not found much, save for racing forms, a horse mag and Kinky Friedman books, which had provided an interesting skew to the Manhattan lawyer. The room was fairly dim so I turned on one of two antique brass candlestick table lamps.

Our stuffed reptile friend was no longer around; the police had taken possession of him when we'd mentioned our find on Friday. They'd not found the Sidewinder on the initial look-around, but they'd not been investigating a murder at that time. Agreeing it was suspicious, they'd said they'd check Snakey for clues. Clues to what, though? Stuffing and scale remnants?

If memory served correctly, Nancy the amateur detective was a pretty methodical gal, so it seemed best to start in the northwest corner where the armoire stood and work my way around. Thirty minutes later I'd not discovered anything new. I sat on the corner of the bed with Kinky's Frequent Flyer and A Case of Lone Star on my lap, and wondered if Thomas was also a closet cigar smoker. It wasn't hard to envision a Kinkycristo perched on those blubbery lips. Idly, I began flipping pages. A business card for a pizza place in Greenwich Village fell from Flyer. Nothing surprising there. Thomas seemed a pizza sort of man, heavy on the sausage and ground beef. I shook the other novel and a wallet-sized photo dropped to a floral wool rug.

A Linda Royale “dang” tiptoed past my lips when I saw the face. A fancy cigarette hung from the lips of the man staring back with a joyful, toothy smile; he appeared genuinely cheery as he held a crystal snifter with hairy digits. Two platinum rings with sizeable diamonds caught light from somewhere beyond the camera. That's where similarities between young Porter Dance-Club King in the photo and old Porter On Ice ceased. This silk-draped fellow, Ralph Bloom-Walters, was at least two decades younger and forty pounds thinner. Evidently food had loved Porter as much as he had it; they'd developed a steadfast, embracing bond over the years.

Why would Thomas be in the possession of a photo of the dead cook? Had Prunella given it to him? That made no sense, but what made a tad more sense was that Thomas had known about her involvement with Porter back in San Francisco – whatever that relationship had entailed – and had held onto the photo for some obscure reason.

Was there something in the photo I wasn't seeing? I studied it for several seconds. There was no one in the background. The man looked cheerful; he wasn't committing any visible crime. It didn't appear to be anything more than what it was: an old, innocuous photo.

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