Read Murder and Salutations (Book 3 in the Cardmaking Mysteries) for Free Online Page B

with a
thousand other reasons, why I would have made a terrible cop. I let
my emotions influence my thought process too much. Honestly,
though, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
    Lillian looked around, then said, “I wish I
had our white board from the store. It’s so much easier when we can
see our ideas printed out. Wait a second, I’ve got an idea.”
    She left me for a minute, and I stayed right
where
    I was. With everything that had happened
today, I hadn’t had time to dwell on my own problems. Thanks to my
nutty landlord, I was going to have to find a new place to live.
The fact that Hester was also evicting my neighbors Barrett and
Jeffrey didn’t help, though the two of them had found their own
ways to make my life less than idyllic. So where could I go? I knew
Lillian would take me in, but we spent enough time together at the
card shop. I doubted either one of us could take cohabitating as
well. Bradford and his family would give me a place to sleep, but
I’d fought most of my life to get out on my own, and I wasn’t going
to surrender it so easily. I’d find a place again. After all, I had
some time. How hard could it be?
    Lillian came back in with a large mirror and
eyeliner. “Have you completely lost your mind?” I asked.
    “ Hey, I’ve left many a
message this way in the past. Most of my ex-husbands found it
charming.”
    “ I just bet they did,” I
said.
    Lillian wrote suspect, motive, means ,
and opportunity on the mirror. Below those, she listed the names of the
people my brother had talked to tonight. I knew there could be more
suspects than that, but we had to somehow limit our list to less
than the telephone book for all of Rebel Forge. She wrote the names
Addie Mason, Luke Penwright, Polly Blackburn and Kaye Jansen down
the left side of the mirror.
    I nodded as she worked. “So we’re looking at
everyone who admitted to seeing Eliza tonight.”
    “ Yes, but I’m missing
someone,” Lillian said as she studied the list.
    “ Beth Anderson?” I asked,
half in jest.
    “ Exactly,” Lillian
said.
    As she added the waitress’s name, I said, “I
wasn’t serious. What possible reason would she have to kill
Eliza?”
    Lillian refused to strike the name. “Don’t
be so naive, Jennifer. Eliza could make an enemy faster than
Stephen King can give you nightmares. We shouldn’t cross her off
our list until we can prove she’s innocent.”
    “ Then let’s see what we do
know,” I said. “Let’s take Addie. Can you honestly see her killing
Eliza? They’ve been partners for years.”
    “ What better reason could
she have?” Lillian said. “That woman would drive a saint to murder.
I wonder what happens to Eliza’s share of Heaven Scent now that
she’s dead.”
    I shrugged. “I’d think it would go to her
estate.”
    “ Don’t be so hasty in that
assumption,” Lillian said. “A lot of partners leave their stake in
their companies to their co-owners so the business can keep on
operating. We need to look into that.”
    “ And how do you propose we
do that?” My aunt had an underground network of sources and
information that would have astounded Bradford, but I didn’t see
how she could find that out.
    “ We’re simply going to ask
her,” Lillian said. “I think we should pay her a social call after
work tomorrow to give her our sympathies in losing her business
partner. You can make her a lovely card, and it will be the perfect
excuse to deliver it.”
    “ You could make her one
yourself,” I said.
    Lillian frowned. “I doubt she’d appreciate
my humor. This calls for a more conventional card than my
offerings. One of yours would be perfect.” I’d encouraged Lillian
to indulge her wicked sense of humor and start her own card corner
in my shop. While her dark sentiments weren’t appropriate for
everyone who came into the card shop, she certainly had developed a
rather loyal fan base for her wit.
    “ You’re probably right,” I
said. “But I can’t do it