Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

files, his expression unreadable. His long fingers, so like hers, hesitated over the last one, then he asked, his voice stilted, “Would... you—”

The door popped open and Luci’s aunts flowed in like a babbling brook, engulfing Luci in their midst. Gentle, but irresistible, they pulled Luci toward the door.

“...need your help, dear... “

“...wedding plans to finish...”

“...cement to buy...”

He made an involuntary movement towards her and her heart jumped with hope, then fell when he stopped and let the aunts take her away.

Did he regret her coming into his life now, she wondered, looking back at him as her aunts dragged her out the door? Was he sorry she’d found him? She couldn’t read his face any better than she could read her own heart. All she knew was that after years of going men-less, she had two of them seriously upsetting the paradigm of her existence.

Out in the hall, her aunts talked fast and avoided making eye contact, but their babble faltered, then faded into the slight sounds of clearing throats and shuffling feet. Shuffling feet? What was going on with them?

Luci opened her mouth to ask, but Miss Theo forestalled her by handing her a sheaf of papers.

“We knew you wouldn’t mind doing these few things for us, dear girl. For the wedding.” Her smile was too bright, too anxious to be real.

Luci looked at the “few things” that went on for at least four pages. “This should keep me busy,” she said, looking up just in time to see three sets of parchment pale cheeks turn pink. This was getting curiouser and curiouser.

Delaney sat in the rubble of the garden on a bench, a droop to his broad shoulders that could have been exhaustion, discouragement or both.

“I take it you still haven’t found anything?” Mickey handed him one of the glasses of water he’d gotten from the still speechless Louise. Judging by the glare in her eyes, they were lucky she was speechless.

The misery in Delaney’s eyes as he emptied the glass in one long gulp made Mickey shift uncomfortably. And to wonder if his eyes were acquiring the same emotion. Attraction to the Seymour women, dead or alive, was an exercise in masochism.

“There’s not a body here.” Delaney rubbed his unshaven chin. “I don’t know what Boudreaux saw that night. Or where it is. But it ain’t here.”

“Captain arrived with our relief. We get four hours off, then he wants us back at headquarters. He wants us in position to move if either Dante or the perp makes a move. And to go over everything again. He thinks we’re missing something.”

Delaney nodded morosely. Mickey sank down next to him, stretched his legs out and stared down into the empty glass—an appropriate metaphor for their case. “How can we have so much data and still not know anything?”

“Yeah, I thought we’d really gotten a break when the Virginia Beach PD linked Harriet Maxwell to our frozen John Doe. Course they still might come up with a connection between her hiring a private dick to find her missing husband, and her and the private dick ending up here as corpses.” Delaney stretched before asking, “Anything more come in on PI Munn?”

Mickey shook his head. “Not yet. Herman Munn wasn’t a high profile snoop. Most of his clientele appeared to have been middle-aged women with wandering husbands. Maxwell’s file only had minimal info in it. His secretary thinks he had most of it with him. Now that we know his name, we’re doing a check of local hotels, etc. See if we can scare up some luggage. At least we have a date to look around. Munn definitely flew to New Orleans a month and a half ago. Coroner thinks Munn was frozen at least two weeks. Possibly more.”

“Seymour’s been dead at least a month,” Delaney said. “If Seymour killed him, that would place time of death shortly after he got here. But it’s more likely he was killed by Maxwell.” Delaney sighed. “We know Munn was tracking Arthur Maxwell for Harriet Maxwell, but not why he got killed.”

“The VBPD says Munn wasn’t an upstanding member of the community. What if he somehow got onto the scam and wanted to be cut in—or to be paid off for not tipping off Harriet?” Mickey yawned so hard he almost fell off the bench.

Delaney caught his yawn. “Let’s get out of here. I’m too hammered to think straight.”

“Yeah.” It would be a relief to get away from the house, from the Seymours and even from Luci.

As the two men walked towards the house, Delaney asked, “Everything in place here?”

Mickey nodded. “We’ve put the money back where we found it.”

“Captain Pryce is blanketing the neighborhood with middle-aged and elderly appearing officers,” Delaney said. “The news the case is solved has already showed up in the newspaper and should be on the twelve o’clock newscasts. We make a very visual withdrawal—”

“And wait for the fly,” Mickey finished. “Pryce really think he’ll fall for it?”

Delaney shrugged. “He’s a pretty cool customer. He’s already managed to kill two people under the noses of a house full of cops. And damn near killed Luci, too. Even if he isn’t buying our withdrawal, I think he’ll go for it. He has to be feeling pretty well invincible. That’s his weakness—and our strength.”

“Yeah. If only the Seymour ladies—” Mickey stopped, sighed.

“Yeah. If only.”

Meeting Sarah was a piece of luck, Artie decided. What better place to hide and watch the Seymour house than from the respectable neighborhood itself and only a couple of blocks away? It didn’t get much better than that. Any closer and Sarah would have known him. But his luck had always been good.

Except for that one time, when he’d met Reggie. Artie frowned—but jail was far behind him. And it had turned out for the good. Who’d have thought dumb old Reggie would come up with such a good scam? Old idiot didn’t have a clue how to really cash in on it, of