Read Murder Sends a Postcard (A Haunted Souvenir) for Free Online Page B

she asked in a tone that implied she probably couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.
    The man paused for a second, then yelled, “Where is that thieving SOB?”
    I had been right. He definitely wasn’t from Keyhole Bay. Sixtysomething, with the ruddy face and veined nose of a longtime drinker, his pale skin branded him as a Northerner as surely as his bad manners did. He wore custom-tailored white slacks and a pastel golf shirt that strained across his beer belly, with an expensive and ostentatious watch clasped around his wrist.
    He stood on the porch, his head thrust forward in the challenging posture of a lifelong bully. A man with a lot of money, very little class, and no tact at all.
    I stood back and watched as Bridget carefully dismantled his air of superiority.
    “I’m afraid I have no idea where Mr. Marshall is,” she said calmly, as though she hadn’t heard his outburst. “He has no interest in this property. There is no reason for him to be here.”
    Somehow, despite the fact that the man was at least six inches taller, she appeared to look down her nose at him. “Will there be anything else?”
    “There damn well will be!” he shouted. Like most bullies, volume was one of his favorite weapons.
    “And that is?” Bridget made a show of suppressing a sigh, as though her boredom threshold had long been passed. She turned and looked at us, the gesture broad and theatrical. Taking the cue, we both shrugged elaborately.
    “I want my damned house! If he’s not here, then maybe you better be turning it over to me, honey.”
    I saw Bridget’s spine stiffen at the casual condescension in his tone, and the familiarity of his words. But she didn’t let him see it.
    “Well,” she said, her voice still controlled, her posture deliberately relaxed, and her tone deceptively cheery, “since I don’t know who you are, or why I should give you anything, particularly the house where I am currently residing, I don’t see how that is going to happen.”
    “I gave that SOB a hefty deposit on this house.” He had stopped screaming, though he was still loud. “He said it’d be ready for us to move in by the first of July. Now I get here and I find you living in my house, Marshall’s nowhere to be found, and my wife is raising hell.” He gestured toward the expensive sedan parked in the road in front of the house.
    I assumed his wife was in the car, though the tinted windows obscured any view of his passenger.
    Bridget shook her head. “You did not put a deposit on this house. This house was never for sale. You put a deposit on a house in this development.
This
house”—she waved her arm as though displaying a prize on a TV game show—“belongs to the bank that financed Mr. Marshall’s venture. And so does the rest of the development.”
    She stared him down. “If you have any other questions, I suggest you make an appointment to see me in my office at Back Bay Bank. You can call my secretary on Monday morning. Bring your receipts and contracts. And maybe your lawyer.
    “In the meantime, I suggest you get off my porch and out of my yard. You’re trespassing.”
    She didn’t wait for his answer.
    She shut the door in his face. She didn’t slam it, just closed it swiftly and firmly, and shot the dead bolt as soon as the latch clicked into place.
    From the porch we could hear the man continuing to yell. He pounded on the door and leaned on the doorbell for several minutes at a time.
    Bridget waited until he was getting hoarse from the shouting, and the pounding grew weaker. Whoever her visitor was, he wasn’t a young man, and he didn’t have the stamina for a sustained attack.
    As he started another round of pounding, she whipped the door open. His arm was in midstrike, and without the solid surface of the door, the momentum of his swing threw him off balance.
    For long seconds he flailed around, nearly falling in a heap on the doorstep. She just stared at him as he struggled to stay on his feet.
    Once he was stable,