Unlawful Alliances by Felicity Nisbet

Author:Felicity Nisbet
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Fiction Works
Published: 2012-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

It was deja vu, going to another funeral. We rode together. Joe insisted I sit up front with Charlie. It was the gentlemanly thing to do.

It bothered me that my husband and my father did not have much in common. No, it wasn’t that. They did, after all, have me and the children in common. And a Scottish heritage. It was more that they didn’t connect—a polite way of saying they didn’t particularly like each other.

Cars filled the mortuary parking lot. White, green, blue, silver. Mercedes, BMW’s, Range Rovers. Volvos looked the poor man’s car of the day. Even a Rolls Royce pulled up behind us. The grandparents, Jack and Sofia Morrison, climbed out and turned over the keys to a valet.

“Another white one,” Charlie mumbled under his breath before turning off the engine of his 1935 Bentley which held its own in this crowd.

Joe clutched my hand as we walked toward the chapel. Was it possessiveness or a need for comfort? Organ music played as people shuffled up the path and through the door. Spotting Erica Stratton sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette, I stopped to observe. Jim Gimble had joined her, pulling a match from his own pocket to light his pipe. I nodded in their direction and Charlie stopped.

“You’re not doing this at a funeral,” Joe said.

“Doing what?”

“Spying on people.”

“We’re trying to find out who murdered Amy,” I said in our defense, “if she was murdered.”

“But last night you told me that the police think it was Scott.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s guilty,” Charlie said.

“Although everything’s pointing in that direction,” I mumbled.

Joe stared from me to Charlie and back again. “I’ll find us a seat.” He walked into the chapel.

“If this is causing problems between you and Joe, I don’t want you—”

“Hush, Charlie.” I took a few steps closer to Erica and Jim. Charlie followed to make it appear as if we were talking rather than eavesdropping.

“Don’t you look the part of the grieving bosom buddy,” Jim said, eyeing Erica’s black suit and hat.

“Yeah, like you’re so broken up over her death, Jimmy.” She stomped out her cigarette, smushed it into the stone path, shrugged her shoulder at him and walked away. She might as well have flicked him off.

“Confirms what you said about no love lost between these two and Amy,” Charlie said.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t tell us why. Erica gave me her story, but I suspect there’s something more to it.”

“Maybe we should ask her why Jim disliked Amy and vice versa.”

I took that as my cue and walked over to Jim Gimble. The only way to have a conversation with him was one on one. This might be the only chance I got.

“Hello, Jim.”

He looked up from his pipe. Who are you? was written all over his face. I hate it when women identify themselves by their husbands. Still, “I’m Jenny Campbell, Joe Campbell’s wife.”

“Oh, right.”

“This is such a tragedy, isn’t it?”

He grunted something unintelligible, ran his hand over his beard, then raised his pipe to his lips and inhaled.

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