Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle by Pauline Jones (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

you they were connected,” Pryce said. “The Chief’s got his invite, too, but that’s not your biggest problem. You’re being watched.”

“What? Who? Where?” He edged back the lace curtains and spotted the dark car. “Dante’s guys?”

“I’m afraid so. Any idea why?”

“Well—” Mickey realized he was about to tell the Captain about Luci getting grabbed by Dante and stopped himself. It would surely be the last straw. “This just gets worse and worse.” He shoved his hands into his hair. “We need that search warrant, sir!”

“I got it—but only for Seymour’s room. You’ll have to wait until after the party for any more.”

Mickey took two frustrated steps away from Pryce. “Did you explain—”

“You don’t explain to a judge, Ross. You listen. It’s the best I could do—unless you ask the old ladies yourself.”

“I don’t think they’ll let us.” And if he tried, he was sure Luci would stop him. Mickey looked at the captain. Too many wild cards in the setup and now their captain was one of them. How good was his judgment going to be now that it was his daughter involved? Mickey took the warrant with a sigh. “Guess it’ll have to do.”

He turned to leave, but Pryce cleared his throat. Mickey froze, then looked at his captain. “Was there something else, sir?”

“This.” He held up an old file with the name Grace Seymour written in aged-looking handwriting on the label. “What’s your interest in a forty-year-old murder, Ross? You pursuing a line of investigation you haven’t told me about?”

“It’s going to be a lovely gazebo, Boudreaux,” Luci said. Working together, they’d been able to get the frame in place without the concrete Reggie had been so sure was necessary. Over Boudreaux’s shoulder she could see the bougainvillea with yellow Police tape still around it. “Not exactly original, but a workable plan, I will admit.”

Boudreaux, not following her train of thought, mumbled a question.

“The body under the gazebo thing. Think about it. You strip the body, remove all identifying clothing and jewelry—except for that touch of squeamishness about the privates it would have worked like a charm for him with Reggie and the bougainvillea—bury him, add a little cement and a gazebo and let nature take its course. In this climate, nature wouldn’t take long. Moisture would accelerate decomposition.” She waited for him to hammer a board in place, then added, “Reggie would have decomposed faster if it hadn’t been such a dry August.”

Boudreaux shared his opinion about August, then asked her to hold the next board.

Luci knelt in the dirt and grabbed the board he indicated. “I suppose he was storing the body until you were ready to pour the cement.”

Boudreaux indicated a desire to ask her a question.

“Of course. Ask me anything.” But when he did, she couldn’t quite assimilate it. “You saw someone besides Frosty the dead man in the freezer?”

He nodded and added that he’d seen a different body than the one whose picture was being shown on television.

Luci stared at him for a long moment, then got up and looked at the garden, wondering which flowering shrub this body was buried under. She sighed. Mickey was going to poop a brick when he found out. Probably better not tell him until she knew for sure. She looked at Boudreaux. “Do the aunts know you have a television?”

His alarm turned him almost incoherent.

“Of course I won’t tell them! They’d freak and then bury it.” The sliding doors to the terrace opened and Luci saw her—her mind wouldn’t quite bend around the word yet, so she didn’t push it. He looked as uneasy as she felt. Not a feeling she was used to having. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? I need to think about this, but first I gotta talk to a man about a gene pool.”

Boudreaux patted her hand and mumbled reassurances.

“Is it that obvious?” she asked. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

Mickey and Delaney waited until the fingerprint guy was through dusting every surface he could find, then donned rubber gloves and moved in to toss the room.

Delaney didn’t talk and Mickey didn’t press him. What could he say to him? You’ll get over it? How could he say it, let alone believe it when it was obvious that their Captain hadn’t gotten over Luci’s mother and he wasn’t sure he’d get over Luci? The Seymour factor was a great big unknown, even without the ghost factor.

It took them less time to assemble Reggie’s meager belongings than it had to dust the room. He hadn’t left much behind to tell his tale. Just personal belongings like toothpaste and toothbrush, shampoo and razor, several pairs of barely used shoes and a few papers.

Mickey picked up the bagged papers that he found the most puzzling: the three envelopes addressed to an Art Moon and each of them had a single dollar bill inside.

“This gets worse and worse,” he said.

Delaney didn’t agree or disagree. He just gave a miserable grunt.

Face to face with him, Luci couldn’t think of a single thing to say. It was, if not a first, a rare experience in her life. A Seymour might not have a gift for saying the right thing, but they were rarely at a loss for words. The storm of feeling that had robbed her of speech was unfamiliar territory for her.

Her father. The word felt strange in her thoughts as she tried it out. Only now, when he was here to fill it, did she notice the void in her life his absence had left. Or maybe she’d been afraid to notice? With hungry eyes she noted the broad shoulders she’d never been able to rest her head on while she confided her joys or sobbed out her sorrows. The man who hadn’t been there to run by her bicycle until she got her balance or to glare at her first date or to tell her what a thingamajig was really called. Luci had a sudden vision of them both bent over