Free Indulgence by Liz Crowe Page A

care right?
    Mercy would be collateral damage if I failed.
    I never failed.
     
    *****
     
    Alison Crawford had a rich mummy and daddy and grew up in a
small community just outside of the city. She graduated with honors from a
well-to-do private school before going on to study Art History at one of the
best Universities in the country. She’d just come home from her final exams to
visit her parents when she found them and her deadshit of a brother dead in
their home.
    I pulled the car up into a space on the main street and
turned the ignition off. The engine clicked as it cooled and I scanned the shop
fronts on either side of the road.
    Alison worked her summer and winter breaks at the teahouse a
few doors down. One thing that Necromancers were terrible at was staying
inconspicuous. You go asking questions in your leathers, or send in the brawn
to do the delicate work and everything falls apart. No, they needed to send the
pretty boy killer, dress him up in a nice looking suit and send him to talk to
the target’s friends at her old workplace.
    Winter was losing its chill, but snow was still collecting
on rooftops and window sills in this part of the country. The sun beat down on
the pretty little cottage town, melting the snow away flake by flake. It was
quaint, but the mark of the terrible murder that had happened a few streets
over still hung in the background like a cold shadow that they couldn’t shake.
    I’d stopped at a service station to grab a coffee just
outside the town limits and even they had been shocked at the news. They still
had a memorial photograph of the family on a noticeboard in the cafe. No
questions had been required for that sliver of information. The Crawfords had
been well known and well liked in these parts, except for the son. He’d trod a
dark path long before he left school and became a man.
    There was a pub down the way called The Golden Lion, and
across from that was a small grocery store that seemed to double as a home and
hardware. Beyond was the teahouse called The Golden Mayflower. Small town
people stuck together in name and business, it seemed.
    The map showed a country club and golf course through the
woods and a variety of large houses with acreage. The place stunk of old money.
    Money and not much to do always resulted in gossip
mongering. It was big business and there was plenty still being flung around
about the Crawford’s murder. More than one person thought that Alison had gone
out into the woods and killed herself. Over her grief, over guilt, over a lot
of different things, but nobody had ever found a body. Someone disappeared and
people automatically thought the worst.
    It may well have been that she’d taken her grief and used it
to plan her own murder.
    Opening the door, I stepped out of the car and into the
sunshine, pushing my sunglasses up my nose. Running over my cover in my head
once more I pressed the fob on my keys and pocketed them, strolling towards the
teahouse.
    Pushing open the door, I took in the quaint little room that
smelt like roasted coffee and cake. Little tables were crammed into every
available nook and cranny, each one covered in a red and white checkered
tablecloth. The place was almost empty, being the end of winter and all. An
elderly man sat by himself at a table by the large front window, nestled in a
pool of sunshine, a teapot with a cup and saucer in front of him. He looked
like a local, so I weaved through the tables and pulled up a chair at the table
next to him, which happened to be the only other table coated in warmth from
outside.
    The old man eyed me curiously, his cup shaking in his hand.
That was more from old age than anything else. Sometimes it was hard to
disconnect myself from the two settings, on reconnaissance or sitting at The
Gambler’s Inn in my leathers.
    Setting my sunglasses and phone on the table, I glanced over
the menu. Tea, more tea, coffee and cake.
    “You’re