Текст книги "A Treasure to Die For"

Автор книги: Richard Houston

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

A Treasure to Die For

by

Richard Houston

Copyright © 2014 Richard Houston. All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.

Version 2015.08.26

Cover Art by Victorine Lieske

Also by Richard Houston:

A View to Die For

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009NNL8EC

Book to Die For

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JLW1E1W

Acknowledgements

The author could not have finished this book without the help of his editors and beta readers:

Elise Abram, www.eliseabram.com

Faith Blum, www.faithblum.com

George Burke

Bob Cherny

Lynne Fellows

Cheryl Houston

Robert Spearman

And for her great cover art, Victorine Lieske, www.bluevalleyauthorservices.com

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all my fans and loyal readers who have told me how much they love this series.

And to my family for all the time I spent shut up in my room to write this novel.

Acknowledgements

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

For several months now, I’ve been thinking of ways to commit the perfect murder. It’s not that I’m a violent man, or I’d own a Doberman instead of a Golden Retriever. No, it’s because after I inadvertently solved a couple of murders, I thought I might try to write a murder mystery. Well, to be fair, Fred should get most of the credit for finding those killers, but I did help. He’s great when it comes to fetching rocks and sticks, but really sucks at speaking, so together we make a pretty good team, like Scooby Doo and Shaggy.

Fortunately for Evanovich and Patterson, I couldn’t get past the first chapter of my book. Good writers need to get into the heads of their characters and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why someone would want to kill another human being. All that changed the day Shelia’s boyfriend tried to kill Fred.

My brief journey into the dark side started like most days when I was between jobs, which lately, was far too often. Fred and I would spend half our morning walking around Evergreen Lake where a normal forty-five minute walk takes a couple hours if I let him swim and retrieve sticks. Little did I know then that I was about to get involved in a real murder.

Bonnie, my neighbor and friend, had talked me into joining her for a signing at a small bookstore in town. She had taken it upon herself to keep me busy ever since my wife, Julie, died last year. Bonnie thought I should be at the signing because the author was supposed to be talking about a hidden code in Tom Sawyer. She knew Julie had bought me a copy of the book on our first date. It was some kind of omen, she said, and insisted I had to go because a friend of hers, who bought and sold rare books, would be there and could tell me how much my copy is worth.

I told her I wouldn’t sell the book for a million dollars and did everything I could to get out of going; including the fact that Fred would probably be soaking wet after his swim in the lake. That was when she insisted on walking the lake with us so she could help keep him out of the water. She would have better luck taking an alcoholic on a tour of Coors’ brewery and not letting him sample the merchandise.

Luckily for Bonnie, Evergreen Lake isn’t much more than a large pond with benches strategically placed where she could stop to catch her breath. Catching a breath for Bonnie consisted of lighting a cigarette and smoking half of it before flicking it into the water. She had recently turned sixty-nine, but refused to let her age stop her from living, as she put it.

About halfway through our walk, Bonnie needed another break and plunked her thin frame down on a nearby bench. “Let’s take five, Jake. We don’t want to be the first ones there.” She was right, of course. I had a habit of always being too early, like the last time I picked up my first wife from work and saw her on her boss’s lap. Sometimes it pays to be late.

“Sure, Bon, Fred needs off this leash anyway.” We were on the backside of the lake, away from the fishermen and most of the morning crowd so I let him loose. He ran straight to a nearby stick and brought it back to me. I instinctively threw it into the water.

Bonnie tried to look perturbed, but her smile gave her away. “Jake, you promised he wouldn’t get wet.”

I answered with a frown when I saw her reach inside her purse for a pack of cigarettes. “And you promised to cut back on those.”

Her smile faded to a pout while we watched Fred swim after the stick. I tried to forget I had agreed to sit through a boring reading by a local author. My mind had drifted to when Fred and I used to take these walks with Julie. Unlike my first wife who would yell and scream when Fred shook himself dry after a swim, Julie only laughed. Then she would shake her head so her ponytail would swing back and forth before picking up the stick to throw it back in the water. Julie had died just when I thought life couldn’t get better.

Fred kept me from becoming totally depressed, and it wasn’t long before I was back to writing how-to articles and doing odd jobs to pay the bills, even if it wasn’t always on time. I knew the real reason I didn’t want to go to the reading was because I was jealous. I couldn’t for the life of me fathom how this guy was not only published, but made it to the New York Times Best Sellers List and was selling his book faster than they could be printed.

Bonnie woke me from my trance with a sharp jab of her elbow. “She has a nerve coming back here.” At seventy-two-hundred feet, we were high enough to enjoy the warm morning sun and escape the haze from Denver, but not high enough to escape from its rudest residents. I didn’t see Shelia and her boyfriend until it was too late.

“Hello, Bonnie,” Shelia said, standing between us and the lake. She had been a neighbor of ours until last year when Bonnie tried to poison Shelia’s husband.

Bonnie glared back and didn’t say a word. Bonnie’s daughter, Diane, had been killed in a terrible hit-and-run accident twenty years before. Then last year, I discovered the car that hit her was a Corvette owned by Shelia’s husband. Only after the attempted poisoning did I find out the driver who killed Diane was Shelia.

Fred came out of the water, dropped his stick at my feet and started shaking like an unbalanced washing machine on the spin cycle. He started with a roll of his head and then really got into it with water flying off his neck and torso until every hair on his body was spraying Shelia and her friend like an untethered garden hose.

“Get that frigging mutt away from me!” Her friend yelled, before picking up the stick and raising it to hit Fred.

That was when I realized why people murder one another. I literally wanted to kill this jerk before he had a chance to kill my dog. I wasn’t close enough to block the blow and found myself looking for another stick, or rock, to throw at the jerk who was about to kill my best friend. But then Fred’s retriever instincts saved his life, or at the very least, a bruised rib. He was in the water and swimming toward where he thought the stick would land before the guy could hit him with it. Jerk lost his balance and fell into the lake when his downward thrust failed to connect with Fred.

Shelia screamed while I broke out laughing. It was better than the perfect murder. Even if he couldn’t drown in the shallow water at this end of the lake, I still had my revenge without the threat of life in prison. The water temperature was barely above freezing, ideal for a Golden Retriever, but hypothermic for us less hairy mammals.

My laughter was cut too short when Bonnie broke her silence, pointing her cigarette at Shelia’s face. “What are you doing here? I told you before I’d see you in hell if you ever show your ugly face up here!”

Shelia didn’t back away, nor did she bother to help her friend climb out of the chilly water. “It was an accident, Bonnie. I told you before, I’m sorry. Why can’t you let it go?”

Bonnie’s eyes filled with tears. “She was only sixteen. She had her whole life in front of her.”

I was captivated by a vision of a burning poker piercing Shelia’s eyeball until a gathering audience woke me from my trance. A couple of joggers had stopped to watch the commotion, so I thought it would be best to put Fred back on his leash. Not because of the joggers, but because he might get it in his mind to help the person who had tried to kill him.

Jerk finally made it to dry land, shivering from his ice-cold bath, and walked over to us with a raised fist. “That mutt is dead meat! I’ll get him and you for this!”

Shelia grabbed his shaking hand and pulled him away before I could answer. I was still thinking of a comeback when Bonnie beat me to it. “You harm one hair on his head, and I’ll see you both in hell!”

Shelia didn’t wait for her friend to answer, and dragged him away without another word. Bonnie turned her attention to the joggers and apparently surprised them enough with her knowledge of anatomical places to put one’s finger that they decided to leave, too. Sailors and construction workers could learn a lot from her when she was upset.

***

Bonnie was still upset when we made it to the bookstore, so I kept on driving and parked outside the Little Bear bar a few blocks down the street.

“Why are you parking here?” She had been too busy fiddling with her purse to notice until I shut off the engine.

“Those things never get started on time, and even if it does, we won’t miss much. How about we go sit on the patio where you can calm down with a cigarette and a drink?”

Bright sunlight shined through the windshield exposing every wrinkle in her tired face. She looked up at me with bloodshot eyes, holding the pack of cigarettes she had been looking for. “Thank you, Jake. That’s a splendid idea. And then I can refresh my makeup in the little girl’s room before we walk over to the bookstore.”

By the time Bonnie recovered and redid her makeup, she was gabbing away about how she could spend the money if we could decode the location of the treasure the author wrote about. It wasn’t until we entered the bookstore that her excitement ceased and she went quiet. The place was packed tighter than a revival tent in Mississippi. Using powers of deduction that would make Hercule Poirot envious, I quickly reasoned that the guy reading at the front of the audience with a poster next to his table that read, Twain’s Enigma by Paul Wilson, was the author. He didn’t bother to look up when we took a seat toward the back with my wet dog.

I already knew, without using any gray cells, that the book was about the somewhere near Breckinridge. Bonnie had told me all that beforehand, and the press had played it up because a similar book that sold a million copies recently made national headlines. Paul Wilson looked like a copycat to me.

The bookstore was small compared to the big-name stores in shopping malls scattered in and around Denver, but that was thirty miles and twenty-five hundred feet down the hill from our little town of Evergreen. I thought the place was quite cozy, even if it was cramped. There was only one chair left, so I let Bonnie have it and stood behind her, holding Fred on a short leash. He had dried off sufficiently, but not enough to ease the odor of wet dog. I suppose I was used to it, and didn’t notice until a couple next to Bonnie got up and left. Fred looked up at me and smiled when I took a seat. I bent down to pat him on the head to let him know how lucky I was to have him when I felt an elbow in my ribs.

“It’s him, Jake,” Bonnie said, before poking me again. “It’s that creep from the lake. And look who’s sitting next to him.”

I stopped massaging my side in time to see Shelia turn around and stare at us. Maybe she didn’t know it was a pet-friendly bookstore, and Fred was a regular, or maybe she was simply surprised that Fred would be interested in literature. I expected her friend, the guy I only knew as Jerk, to turn around too, but he seemed far too mesmerized by what the author was saying. “Shh, Bon,” I whispered, holding a finger to my lips.

Shelia snickered, then turned back to listen, too.

“But that’s impossible,” Bonnie whispered. “He was soaking wet only an hour ago. How’d he dry out so soon?”

Several people from the row in front of us turned and gave the universal sign for her to be quiet. It seemed to work and everyone went back to listening to the author.

“‘Andrew Jackson Drakulich, or Drake as his niece, Penny, called him, removed the last pack from his frozen mule and stumbled to retrace his steps back toward the shelter of the abandoned mine. It was less than twenty yards, yet he could no longer see the path he had made just a few minutes earlier. Sixty mile an hour winds hid every trace of his return with several feet of new snow. Drake swore at the cold wind biting his face and continued toward where he thought the mine should be.

“‘Once back inside, Drake struggled to close the splintered aspen door against the gale-force wind, and cursed again when the wind violently caught the door and tore it out of his hands like a kite from a child. Then just as viciously as it had been torn from his grip, the door slammed back as though connected to a coiled spring, and hit Drake full force on his outstretched fingers.

“‘Drake had seen men's fingers crushed by misdirected sledge hammers before, a common occurrence among novice miners, and he could have accepted that, but nothing in his sixty-two years had prepared him for what the equivalent of a twenty-pound sledge could do in subfreezing weather. In that brief moment between realization and pain, he stared at his fingerless glove with all the astonishment of a gold strike. Then, before the pain completely hit him, and before the wind could blow the door open again, he dropped the latch beam in place with his good hand and screamed every obscenity he knew.’”

Wilson stopped to catch a breath and take a sip of water. It was just long enough for Jerk to cut in. “Can you get to the part of the treasure? The paper said you were going to show how Mark Twain put a secret code in his book on where to find a fortune in lost gold. It didn’t say anything about you reading to us like a bunch of preschoolers.”

The look on the author’s face would have made Medusa jealous, but I doubt anyone noticed. Jerk must have changed his shirt, but his pants were still wet, making it look like he had a bladder accident.

“Craig, please. Not here,” Shelia said, turning to face him. Her cheek was bright red, and obviously it wasn’t because she had too much sun at the lake, or embarrassed by his remarks. Even I knew it would soon turn a dark blue. She should have let him drown.

I whispered a little too loud to Bonnie, “I think the name Jerk suits him better.”

My remark resulted in a laugh from a few people next to us.

“I’m sorry if the news article was misleading, sir,” Wilson continued, unaware of my joke. “My publisher hired a new publicist straight out of school who is trying to make a name for herself. The treasure in my book is folklore as is its location. I suggest if you are looking for a treasure hunt, then maybe you should go out and buy Forrest Fenn’s book.”

“Who the hell is that?” asked a kid sitting next to the jerk I now knew as Craig. He had the weirdest hair I’d ever seen. His head was shaved bald on one side and long, purple hair on the other.

“That guy who claims to have buried a treasure so people will buy his book, Cory. Now shut up and let him finish. Or have you forgotten why we’re here?” It was the punk’s girlfriend, or at least that’s the impression I got. It could have been his sister, for all I knew. Either way, they were definitely a matched set with nearly identical tattoos covering their necks and arms.

“Thank you, miss,” Wilson said. He began to read where he had left off, then looked back at the audience. “Well, considering how my publisher may have brought most of you here on false pretenses, I guess it won’t hurt to skip ahead to the treasure. But please remember, this is historical fiction. I have simply taken an incident from the past and used it to create a story.”

Wilson lowered his eyes again and started flipping pages. Fringed with graying hair, his shiny bald spot reminded me of my grandmother’s doilies. He seemed to find the page he wanted, and woke me from my daydream of Grandma setting the table at Thanksgiving dinner. But instead of reading, he held a finger on the page, removed the glasses he kept on a rope around his neck, and raised his head. “I need to at least fill you in on some details first. The story is about an old miner, I call Drake, who in the late summer of 1895 went searching for the Lost Tenderfoot Mine in the hills above Breckenridge. Drake and his brother had lost their jobs working the silver mines of Leadville after the big crash of eighty-three. His brother needed money desperately so he could move his family back to Denver, where they could find care for his daughter, Penny, who was dying of consumption. The story of the lost mine had been around for nearly twenty years by then, and Drake had nothing to lose, so he went looking for it. Legend has it that some unknown Tenderfoot had brought out twenty pounds of gold in 1880, and couldn’t find his way back. Miners and fortune hunters have been searching for it ever since.

“Anyway, Drake must have found the mine and dug out five thousand dollars worth of nearly pure gold, for he left a message describing his find and the location of where to find his gold and the lost mine. However, according to an article I found in the Rocky Mountain News, his message wasn’t found until some uranium miners stumbled on the remains of his pack mule in the early fifties. There was a frenzy of sorts, searching for the gold, but because Drake had encrypted the location in code, the treasure was never found, and it soon became just another forgotten fable.”

“You’re telling us there’s only five thousand dollars?” It was Cory again. “I don’t call that no treasure.”

Wilson didn’t seem to be very upset at the latest interruption. He smiled and looked back with cold, gray eyes at the kid. I’d seen that same smile before. I think it was Hannibal Lecter in the movie, Silence of the Lambs. “Well, son, that would be about twenty pounds at the price of gold back then. Do the math if you want to know how much twenty pounds of gold is worth today. Twelve troy-ounces per pound, times twenty, times twelve hundred dollars is a nice day’s work. But of course, the real treasure is the mine itself. Crack Drake’s code and you have wealth beyond imagination.”

Cory didn’t say another word. I couldn’t see his face from where I sat, but I could imagine him counting on his fingers trying to calculate the sum.

Wilson didn’t wait for the kid to come up with a figure. “That’s nearly three hundred thousand, Son,” he said before refocusing on his book.

He waited a moment for it to sink in then continued. “I think I left off where Drake had found shelter in an abandoned silver mine and lost his frostbitten fingers when the wind blew the mine door shut on his outstretched hand. I’ll skip ahead now to the good part where he has started a makeshift fire from all but one book in his pack.

“‘Drake huddled over the flames, trying to catch every last ray of its nefarious warmth, as the fire burned with the words of dead writers. Drake needed all the help Penny's friends could give him if he were to make the twenty-mile trek into Leadville once the fire died out. As he fed more pages to the fire, and watched them slowly die, he remembered a story Penny had read to him about how British spies would send coded messages keyed to a popular book. It was a simple code: a series of numbers representing a page and word count for each word of the message. The cipher would search the book for a word he wanted to use and then count how many words came before the chosen word on the page. To decipher the code, the spy simply found a copy of the key book, and wrote down the word corresponding to each pair of numbers.

“‘Hours later, Drake finished his Last Will and Testament in which he says Penny’s consumption will be cured when she solves his riddle. On the back side of the will, he put twelve lines of numbers, and a note telling her to read the story where a boy gets his friends to do his chores. Then he put Penny’s copy of Tom Sawyer in his pack with the gold, and threw it down the shaft at the end of the mine.’”

“So you’re telling us we got to buy your book to find where the gold is hidden?” It was Cory again. His tone suggested more than a question; it came out like an accusation.

Wilson answered condescendingly. “I told you, this is a fictionalized story of an article I read from a 1953 issue of the Rocky Mountain News. The book you want to buy, if you insist on believing the story is real, is written by Mark Twain, not me.”

“And what book is that, Mr. Wilson?” asked a bald man in the front row, wearing worn Levi's and a sleeveless shirt that showed a crude tattoo of the Marine Corp symbol and the words, Semper Fi, beneath it.

Craig took it upon himself to answer for the author. “Jeez, dumbo, any idiot can see it’s Tom Sawyer.”

The bald guy in the front row turned to Craig, allowing me to see his face. There was real hate in his eyes, and for the brief second I saw him before he turned back, I thought he looked familiar.

“I’m right though, ain’t I, Wilson?” Craig asked as though nothing had happened between him and the bald guy.

“Yes, but not just any copy of Tom Sawyer. You must remember, Drake wrote the code in 1895 and Tom Sawyer was first published in 1876, so it’s anybody’s guess which version was used. The wrong edition will throw off the word count.”

Wilson was about to continue when a gray haired woman sitting in the row ahead of me raised her hand.

“Yes, Patty?” Evidently she wasn’t his mother, or he wouldn’t have used her first name.

“Perhaps the old miner was using one of the pirated Canadian versions.” She spoke so softly, I had a hard time hearing her.

Craig was still standing and turned to face the timid woman. “A what version?” he demanded.

Wilson answered for her. “I believe the question was about Canadian versions that were copied from the London edition. Is that your question, Patty?”

She nodded her head without speaking.

Craig cut in again. “You mean my first edition might not be the right version?”

Wilson’s eyes seemed to dilate. They had been a light gray, but were now pure black. “You have a first edition of Tom Sawyer?” he asked. “My God, do you have any idea what that’s worth?”

Shelia, who hadn’t uttered a word during the debate, suddenly nudged Craig in the leg and told him to shut up. “Look who’s the idiot now. Why don’t you tell everyone where we live while you’re at it, so they can come and rob us tonight?”

“What? Who would steal that old thing? Didn’t he just tell you we don’t have the right copy anyway? And I don’t need no woman telling me I’m a frigging idiot.” He didn’t wait for her to answer and stormed out without her, slamming the door so hard it shook the glass walls at the front of the store. Shelia followed on his heels. She reminded me of Fred when I yelled at him for doing something bad. I’m sure if she had a tail, it would be between her legs.

“Miss? Wait up. I need to talk to you.” Those who were watching Shelia turned to see the old lady jump out of her chair and run after her; we had no problem hearing her this time.

Shelia looked annoyed, but slowed down long enough for the old lady to catch up. “Do I know you?”

They had everyone’s attention, including the author. “I may have one of those pirate copies, if you’re interested. Can we go somewhere and talk?”

Fred yelped when Bonnie jumped out of her seat and stepped on his foot. “I need to tell Patty your copy isn’t for sale, Jake, before she sells it to them.”

“You know her, too?” I asked, running after Bonnie with Fred at my heels. He wasn’t limping, so I doubt if he was hurt, since she couldn’t weigh a hundred pounds, and that’s when she carried her ten-pound purse. She probably scared him more than anything. I caught her before she got to the door.

“Is that why you brought me here? To sell the copy of Tom Sawyer Julie gave me?” I asked before noticing we were now the center of attention. I turned to the audience and uttered a lame apology before leading Bonnie and Fred outside.

Shelia and Patty were in the midst of a heated conversation while standing next to a beat-up Camry not much newer than my Jeep. I could have been wrong about them arguing, but they were both waving their arms in the air like a couple of prize fighters. Craig had already started the car and was revving the engine. We couldn’t hear the argument over his noisy muffler.

“Damn it,” Bonnie said. Her posture spelled defeat. “I can’t tell her now, not with Shelia there.”

I felt bad for raising my voice, but didn’t have time to say so before Shelia got in the car. We all watched as Craig raced out of the parking lot in a cloud of blue smoke.

Patty turned and came back toward us, smiling. She could easily pass for Bonnie’s sister if I didn’t know better. They each stood about five-two, had the same cloudy-blue eyes and didn’t bother to dye their gray hair.

Bonnie bent down to Fred’s level and held his head between her hands. “I’m sorry, Freddie. Did Aunt Bonnie hurt you?” Before he could bark his answer, she looked up at me. “I should have asked first. I thought you’d be happy to get the money for your book.”

“Is this Fred the Wonder Dog?” Patty asked when she joined us.

Fred beamed and offered his paw.

“See, I told you, Patty. I swear he’s human sometimes,” Bonnie remarked.

Then turning to me, “Jake, I’d like you to meet an old friend. Patty, this is Jake.”

Patty extended a frail hand. “I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you.”

I didn’t know how to answer. The first thing that came to mind was to say Bonnie must be smoking something other than cigarettes, but I held my tongue. Luckily, Bonnie broke the awkward silence before I put my foot in my mouth.

“I hope your friend doesn’t think we were rude running out on his reading, but I had to tell you Jake’s book isn’t for sale.”

Patty sighed before answering. “Why don’t you tell Paul yourself when he drives me home, Bonnie? I’m sure he won’t mind dropping you off first.”

Bonnie looked confused. “Paul? Oh, the author.”

Her blank expression turned ecstatic, looking at me like a teenager who was just invited to the prom. “Do you mind, Jake?”

I couldn’t speak for Fred, but after the day I had, I didn’t mind at all. We said our good-byes and headed for home.

***

I had completely forgotten about the incident at the lake until the next day when Fred and I made our way to Bonnie’s for coffee before going on our walk, or in Fred’s case, his swim. Bonnie lived just below us in a house built back in the seventies that resembled the structures covering old mines; she called it her mine shaft. Whatever architectural style one wanted to pin on it, it was huge compared to my little cabin and sometimes a little too close.

She put the television on mute after letting us in the back door. I helped myself to coffee while Fred went over to his bowl that Bonnie kept by her refrigerator.

“You came home late,” I said as I took my usual chair at her kitchen table. I knew this because her television was off all night. I never watch much television, mainly because I don’t own one, but Bonnie does. She has it blasting nearly twenty-four-seven, and I never miss an episode of Doctor Oz or Ellen when her windows are open.

She removed a spoon from her cup and looked up. Her eyes showed bewilderment. “What makes you say that, Jake?”

“Your TV wasn’t on.”

She frowned and went back to stirring her coffee. “Well, if you must know, that nice author took us to the Wildflower for coffee, then we all went next door to the Little Bear for a few drinks before he brought me home.” Her tone suggested I was intruding.

“Sorry, Bon, just trying to make conversation,” I said before jumping out of my chair to turn the sound back on the television when I saw the jerk from the lake flash by on the screen. The news reporter was saying something about a burglary and a murder. I grabbed for Bonnie’s remote and hit the back button. She had a DVR that allowed her to reverse or pause whatever she had been watching.

Bonnie stopped stirring her coffee again. I once remarked that if she drank cream instead of coffee, she could turn it into butter. She pointed at the television with her spoon. “Isn’t that’s Shelia’s new boyfriend? What’s he doing on TV?”

“Shelia’s been murdered,” I answered, realizing Bonnie must have missed the part about Shelia checking out.

It looked like she was going to drop the spoon. Her face went blank, and she stared at the television before speaking again. “Murdered?”

“So it seems. Someone stuck her in the neck with a nail file and punctured her carotid artery.”

The interview must have been live. The reporter, Paula Morgan, was shivering in the cold morning air while interviewing Mr. Jerk, AKA Craig Renfield. He, in turn, couldn’t seem to focus on anything above her neck. “I came home from watching the CU game at a buddy’s house and found the door wide open, and she was laying in the kitchen,” he said without taking his eyes from Paula’s cleavage.