Third Crime's the Charm by Maggie Pill

Third Crime's the Charm by Maggie Pill

Author:Maggie Pill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peg Herring
Published: 2022-04-04T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter Twenty-Five

Earl-Thursday, 10:30 a.m.

Strolling around B-Bird Park isn’t like when I used to cover my farm on foot, looking for fences that needed fixing or signs of crop damage, but it’s what I’ve got these days. The park is clean and nice, and there’s lots of wildlife. People wave when I pass and sometimes stop what they’re doing to talk for a while. The talk isn’t usually about important stuff. In fact, it’s mostly a repeat of what you said yesterday and the day before. It isn’t the words so much as the reaching out, reminding ourselves we’ve still got things to say.

I came around the corner of Main South and Stork to find Matthew Nowicki sitting on a bench, hunched over one of those little tablet things. My first thought was how silly it was to look down at a screen when the lake in front of him was full of birds, fish, and other critters, but to each his own. I wasn’t going to disturb him, but Matthew looked up and called out, “Morning, Earl.”

“Matthew.” Nobody who’s called the guy “Matt” once ever does it again. He isn’t shy about telling you how he sees things. “Nice day.”

He looked up as if noticing it for the first time. “Yes.” I would have gone on then, but he said, “Ever heard of Monroe Island?”

“Can’t say I have.”

Rising, he came to where I stood and showed me the tablet. It was hard to see the screen in the bright sunlight, but I made out an aerial photo of a dark green spot in a bright blue ocean. “Pretty.”

“More than that.” Matthew gave me a long look, as if judging whether I could handle a big surprise. “Monroe Island is where celebrities go when they ‘die.’” He made quotation marks with his free hand.

“What do you mean?”

“It started with Marilyn Monroe. She got tired of being the Blonde Bombshell, so her people gave out the story that she was dead. What really happened is she bought this entire island no one knew about.” Tapping the screen with a finger, he screwed up his face the way people do to push their glasses back up on their noses. “Some sources say DiMaggio paid for it and visited her there every year until his death.”

“She must get lonely these days. Joltin’ Joe’s been dead a long time.”

“Yes, he really is gone. It’s not clear if Marilyn is still alive, but if she is, that’s where you’d find her.”

“On an island nobody knows about.”

“Yes.” He waited to see if I had more to say, but I figured Matthew didn’t want to hear what I was thinking. “Once she got out of the rat-race, Marilyn decided to invite others who couldn’t take the pressure anymore. Now, lots of famous people who are supposed to be dead live out in the Pacific, on Monroe Island.”

“And nobody knows but you.”

He shrugged, trying to look modest. “There’s more than me, but I am part of a network that investigates these things.



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