Read A Trifle Dead: Cafe La Femme, Book 1 for Free Online Page B

Apparently some of the things I blurted out randomly were worth writing down.
    I’d never actually looked at the site, though.
    Once the kitchen was halfway clean, I sent Nin and Lara home and cracked open my laptop. The blog came up in Google easily enough, and the top post was one of Stewart’s glamour shots of Bev Darrow and her meringue erotica. He’d asked her some interview questions, and the whole thing came across pretty well.
    Underneath was a post by simoning reporting the dead body found swinging in a net in Crash Velvet’s spare room and that police were considering it a suspicious death. There was also a bit of a blurb about the Crime Management Unit handling the case, with a link back to the Tasmania Police website about how the unit was made up of general officers as well as members of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB). No mention of the body being a junkie busker, as Gary referred to him, but Simon had published interviews with all the band members about how shocked they were and how weird it all was.
    The final tagline of the post was: Publicity Stunt Gone Wrong, or has the Trapper Gone Homicidal? Have your say on our forum!
    The word ‘Trapper’ had a link to an earlier post by random_scotsman , so I clicked through.
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    WHO IS THE TRAPPER?
    Margarita of Margarita’s Pre-Loved Fashions (Bellerive) discovered her missing cat hanging in a net from a tree. Bizarrely, it seems that this was part of an elaborate contraption set up to catch a passerby. What kind of sick puppy are we dealing with here?
    [UPDATE—in answer to the huge number of comments and emails that crashed our server this morning, the cat was fine. No damage to the cat. Is it morally wrong to play practical jokes on animals? Have your say on our forum!]
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    ‘ S uch a hack ,’ I sighed, but kept reading.
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    This is not the first mysterious trap sprung upon the citizens of Hobart. Two days previously, an employee of Australia Post returned to his Dynnyrne home only to fall through a hole in his entrance hall, and land in a steel cage. Using a mobile phone, he called a locksmith to secure his release. When interviewed, the postal worker (who wishes to remain anonymous) said, ‘I don’t know how that bastard got all that in there so quickly. I only went out for milk.’
    Have you heard any more stories about this Trapper? Has anyone you know been caught in one of his contraptions? Comment !
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    S ometime later , I lay in wait for our resident Scotsman.
    ‘Tabitha,’ said Stewart as he stepped out of the office to find me sitting on the stairs. ‘Wha’s up?’
    I smiled winningly. ‘Fancy painting my walls?’
    He gave me a suspicious look. ‘According to my sources, when ye smile like that, I’m supposed tae start running.’
    ‘Where would be the fun in that?’
    Apparently I had a good point.
    ‘The meringue erotica story is daein well,’ Stewart said as we went through to the café. ‘Bringing a heap of readers to the site. I could do with a few more like that.’
    ‘More hits than the cat-in-a-net story?’
    ‘Are ye kidding me? Real news versus patisserie porn? No contest. Though cats do rule the internet.’ He gave me a knowing grin. ‘Have ye been reading my blog, Ms Darling?’
    ‘Maybe a little. Looks like we’ve got our very own Trapper here in the building.’
    ‘Aye, maybe.’ He didn’t look convinced. ‘Can I really take those rubbish posters down?’
    ‘Be my guest.’
    Stewart removed them carefully and meticulously. ‘See, much better already.’
    I think he meant soulless and boring, but I was still trying to tease information out of him, so I kept that opinion to myself. It only hurt a little. ‘So, who’s this anonymous postal worker?’ I asked.
    ‘I’m nae daft,’ he said in a tone that said ‘sprung’. ‘My sources are protected, Darling.’ Or was it ‘darling’? My last name leads to such emotional ambiguities.
    ‘We don’t have Freedom of the Press in this