Dearly Departed by Carly Winter (best affordable ebook reader .txt) 📕

upbeat temperament, had admitted to killing thirty-one people. Gesche Gottfried murdered fifteen people in fourteen years, including her parents, two husbands, her children and some friends. Nannie Doss murdered four husbands. The list went on, but one thing I noted was that all of them were killed with poison, not a knife.

Perhaps Bill had been correct. Maybe women didn't have the stomach to kill in such a bloody way. But the fairer sex certainly did have the fortitude to murder over and over, and the examples I'd studied proved that. Perhaps mental issues played a role. Jane Toppan had been sentenced to a mental facility, deemed insane.

Of course, one could always look at Lizzie Borden, who had supposedly killed her parents with an axe. That must have been quite bloody. Had mental problems affected her?

Did Charles' wife, Claudia, qualify as crazy? Not from what I’d witnessed, but the woman who’d killed thirty-one people was also called Jolly Jane. On one hand, she was a happy and upbeat person, but on the other, she possessed a dark side where she enjoyed killing. People had many different sides to them. Claudia hadn't exactly been friendly and pleasant, but did she have that darkness within her?

Possibly. Perhaps she'd finally reached the top of her patience level with Charles about the divorce. Maybe Mrs. Wilson had been right and she'd killed for the money. She had motive, and I didn't think it was a smart idea to exclude her from the suspect list, no matter what Special Agent Bill Hart said about it.

“I think I need this green jacket,” Donna said, bringing me out of my thoughts. “Wouldn't that look great with my eyes? With a little black eyeliner? It reminds me a bit of one Marilyn Monroe wore in that magazine.”

The coat, a stylish number with large black buttons down the front and black lapels, would look nice with Donna's fair coloring. “I don't know, Donna. This is a pretty bold jacket. I think you'd need more than a little black eyeliner to really pull it off.”

“Oh, I like that. Bold. I like being bold. Marilyn was bold in her own way, too.”

Although Donna and I weren't friends when Marilyn had died, she'd shared many times how much she adored the actress.

“Look at Audrey Hepburn,” she said, turning the magazine toward me. “Isn’t she gorgeous? Her style is more subdued than Marilyn’s but her beauty just jumps off the page. She’s so sophisticated.”

Large, soulful, intelligent brown eyes stared at me from the page. Her slight smile reminded me of someone harboring a secret she wanted to tell, but never would. Sophisticated and beautiful, indeed.

I smiled at my friend who didn't meet my gaze but she righted the magazine toward her and kept fingering through the pages. She seemed upset, and I had a feeling I knew why. “Are you sure you didn't see your captain?”

Donna sighed and slapped the magazine closed. “Fine. Yes, I saw him. He lied to me about his itinerary and I found him in a bar in Seattle making eyes at another stew while running his hand up and down her back.”

“That's a bummer.”

“He's a jerk.” She picked up her magazine again. “I'm over him.”

But she wasn't, and he'd hurt her terribly, no matter how much she tried to hide it. It became crystal clear the only reason she'd accompanied me to the library was so she’d have something else to concentrate on besides her wayward pilot.

I returned to my reading. After a few minutes, I shut the book, having had enough of female killers. “If you were going to kill someone, how would you do it?”

Donna glanced up at me, her brow furrowed. “Are you looking for advice or is this just a pretend scenario?”

“A pretend scenario. There's no one I really want to murder right now.”

She finally smiled and folded her hands on top of the table. “It would depend on why I wanted to kill them.”

“What do you mean?”

“What's my motive?”

“A customer who grabbed your bippy and gave it a squeeze.”

Donna threw her head back and laughed. “If he was cute enough, I may ask him if he wanted to marry, not kill him.”

“You're crazy,” I said, giggling.

“Now, if he was ugly, I think I'd slip a little something in his drink. Put him into an endless sleep while I pretended to have no idea of what happened.”

Donna also defaulted to poisoning. How interesting.

“What about this scenario: You're married and your husband cheats on you? What do you do?”

She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, if I was angry enough, I could see myself becoming physically violent. I wanted to hit the pilot when I found him at the bar.”

“Do you think you could stab someone?”

Donna glanced out the window for a long moment. “In a fit of rage, possibly. It would depend on how angry and hurt I felt. I think I'd have to be out of my mind in order to put a knife in someone.” She pulled out a silver flask from her purse and took a sip. “Do you want some?”

“No, thanks,” I said, checking my watch. She'd hit the bottle early, even by her own standards. “I have to get back soon. I'm meeting Bill.”

“Who's Bill?”

“An FBI agent.”

Donna's eyes widened. “I'm waiting for the punchline on this one.”

“An FBI agent showed up to investigate Charles' murder. I guess you could say I've been helping him.”

“Helping him how?”

Once again, I wasn't sure if I was actually assisting him or if he was using me, and if there was even a difference.

“He's asked me to go with him on some interviews.”

“It sounds like he's making a move on you.”

“I doubt it, Donna,” I said with a shrug. “I think he's just trying to get his job done.”

“Why is the FBI investigating a murder? Was Charles some government spy or something?”

I leaned forward after taking a quick glance around to make sure no one eavesdropped on us. “Bill is in