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

in there. No reason to speed up the hearts of their neighbors. They were pretty old hearts.

Mickey walked with them back to the garage, standing by the freezer while they began to pack up their gear. He wasn’t sure why he decided to open it. He just did.

“Wait.”

This time it didn’t look like Charles Stewart would be walking through the front door.

Gloves on, Mickey opened Stewart’s suitcase. Crime scene hadn’t searched his belongings, just the room. Nothing too interesting in there. Just what you would expect to find in a suitcase. Mickey checked out the stuff in the bathroom. Again, just what one would expect to find.

He went back in the bedroom, stopping in the doorway to study the room. There had to be some reason why someone killed him. There had to be some reason why Stewart would pretend to die—twice. Might not be a good reason, but a reason.

If someone were after Luci, he wanted to know about it and stop the culprit. He was a pretty easygoing guy, well, actually he wasn’t easygoing. That had been Delaney’s thing. He’d always been the good cop, with Mickey on the bad cop detail. And if anyone were messing with his wife’s head, well, bad cop would so be there.

A beam of sunlight fell across the fireplace and for the first time, Mickey noticed a bit of ash on the brick inlay. That was odd. As the crime scene techs had noted, Saffron kept the place pretty clean.

As he stared at the dirt, it was hard not to remember that Artie once used the chimney to hide a body.

But they’d found Stewart’s body.

He didn’t want to look.

He had to look.

If there were—something up there, it would eventually start to smell. Probably the body, if it had been stashed there, was the one in the freezer.

Probably.

He crossed, crouched and took a peek.

He wasn’t as surprised as he should be to see feet dangling just out of sight.

He stood up and turned toward the door—as Charles Stewart stopped in the doorway.

“What the hell is going on?”

It was a good question, but Mickey didn’t have an answer.

Mickey had a definite feeling of déjà vu. This particular parlor had been the gathering point for the two previous murder investigations. Luci had almost delivered Gracie in this room.

Lila, Luci’s mom, had been happy to take Gracie out for an ice cream. Mickey wasn’t sure who was more surprised that Lila turned out to be a pretty decent grandmother, Luci, Captain Pryce, Mickey—or Lila.

Something had happened when Gracie turned her solemn gaze on Lila. Lila’s eyes had widened. She’d held her finger out and when the tiny hand closed around her finger, she’d—sighed.

She was still a Seymour, still a difficult mother-in-law and probably a bit challenging as a wife, but when she was with Gracie she was—a grandma.

Now Pryce, Luci and Charles Stewart watched him quietly, while Mickey tried to figure out where to start. Some uniforms had canvassed the neighborhood and turned up zip. No one saw anyone arrive or leave the house.

And they had some pretty nosy neighbors. With really old bladders, so they could have missed something—though it would surprise him if they had. They probably all wore Depends so they wouldn’t miss anything. There was no doubt that the Seymours were good value for nosy neighbors.

The body that had been extracted from the chimney was obviously Stewart’s twin—as was the body found in the freeze. The only problem, Stewart said he was an only child.

He didn’t know of any reason why anyone would want to kill him. He was in the dry cleaning business. Not married. Not involved with anyone—or anyone’s wife. He wasn’t particularly religious or politically active. He didn’t gamble, in real life or online. He didn’t even have a dog.

He was—medium. He wasn’t that rich or even that interesting.

Captain had already done some preliminary checking on the guy and unless he had a really secret life he was as dull as he looked.

Just looking at him made Mickey want to go take a nap.

Probably the most interesting thing he’d done was decide to come to New Orleans for a mystery weekend—and arrive early.

“Why did you decide to arrive early?” Mickey asked, more to break the silence than from any feeling that the answer would shed light on the mystery.

Stewart looked sort of surprised. “I’d never been to New Orleans. Wanted to have some time to explore the city before the mystery weekend started.”

Mickey nodded and pretended to write it down.

“How did you like the cemetery tour?” Luci asked.

Stewart looked rueful. “I missed it. I stopped to get some beignets and lost track of time. So I just wandered around the Quarter instead.”

So he didn’t have an alibi. It wasn’t a huge fact, however. Why would he want to kill—himself? Twice.

Luci, who sat frowning through what had to be the most boring interrogation of all time, looked up suddenly, her gaze connecting with his.

“Just a minute.”

She left the room so abruptly Mickey didn’t have time to ask her why. In a few, she returned, holding the door for Saffron, who was carrying a tray with a pitcher of lemonade and glasses.

“I thought we could all use something to drink,” Luci said.

It was a flash from the past. She’d offered him and Delaney lemonade after they’d been dealing with the first body in the freezer, the morning after his car got shot up at the airport, when he was trying not to fall in love with her.

He smiled at her. She smiled back. The moment drew out and finally Pryce cleared his throat. Mickey cleared his throat.

“Let’s see, where were we?” He looked down at his notes, but all he saw on the page was the big question mark he’d been embellishing.

“I guess you didn’t hear anything, did you Saffron?” Luci’s voice was so casual, the question was almost a throw away.

Mickey gave Luci a look. Now she’d start talking.

“No, ma’am.” Her eyes glistened with ghoulish excitement. “I was