Free Death among the Roses: a Melanie Hart Mystery (Melanie Hart Cozy Mysteries Book 1) by Anna Drake

father."
    "Yes. I already know that, sir.”
    I heard myself spit out ‘sir’ and nearly gagged. But since I was trying to make points with the man, the title seemed a good idea. But trust me, humble isn’t my favorite slice of the pie.
    "This is about something else, then?" Gossford asked.
    "Yes, I wanted to be certain you'd picked up the same information I recently stumbled across.”
    "Really? What have you learned?"
    "It comes from Tony Stepich. He was Gary’s best man?”
    “Yes. I’ve spoken with him.”
    “Ah... we were out to dinner together Saturday night, and he just happened to mention that Gary received a phone call shortly before the wedding was to begin."
    No way did I want Gossford knowing I’d been pumping the man for information at the time.
    "Yeah, I pried that little gem out of the man too. In the church basement, right after I spoke with you and Devon.”
    I clenched my teeth. Gossford already knew about the phone call? First, I’d appeared humble, now, dumb. But I plowed on. "I'm relieved to hear it. I thought you probably had, but this morning I woke up thinking about assumptions and how they can mess up a person."
    He chuckled. "I appreciate you're reaching out to me. That's all, then?"
    "Yes, unless, you’re willing to tell me if Ginger’s still in custody?”
    “No, Melanie, she isn’t. I released her early this morning.”
    I let go of a breath I hadn’t even known I’d been holding. “Oh, I’m so relieved.”
    Talk about sounding unprofessional. Serious-minded reporters never gushed like that.
    "You tell your dad to give me a call,” Gossford answered. “I've got some interesting stuff for him."
    "I suspect his will be the next phone call you get, sir.”
    Sir again? I wondered. Had I no self-respect left, at all?
    After we disconnected, I sat on my stool and chewed over our exchange along with my Wheaties. From the tone of Gossford's voice, I suspected he was making progress in the case.
    That prospect cheered me. I couldn't wait to have the murder solved and the killer locked up in jail. But I squirmed anew, wondering if the killer would turn out to be someone I knew... or even, possibly, Ginger?
     
    ***
     
    The newspaper office I walked into about thirty minutes later certainly couldn’t be called a beehive of activity. Even with a murder story taking center stage, our rooms looked their usual, dull, understated selves.
    Occupying the first floor of an old building on Main Street, the offices had existed here since the newspaper’s founding under Isaac Hart. But although our place of operation had remained fixed, time had wrought a huge number of other differences.
    Our staff had been whittled down over the years to just four people. Betty McCracken was office manager and general drudge. Lillian Whitcomb sold ads. Dad, of course, was General Manager and Editor, and served as ad man when the need arose. I held the lofty positions of reporter, photographer, and doer-of-other-assignments that Father or anyone else sent my way.
    But I wasn’t the only one. All of us were gladly willing to do whatever it took to get out the Gazette .
    And where giant presses behind our offices once would have rumbled to life, now the operation was purely electronic on our end. We wrote our stories on computers, assembled those stories electronically onto mocked up computer pages, and then the whole was sent off to be printed in a city miles distant.
    I glanced to my left and saw Dad hard at work, his ear glued to the phone and a happy smile plastered across his winsome face. I suspected he relished returning to his reportorial roots. And I wondered how many times he’d had to literally sit on his hands to prevent them from ripping stories out of my grasp and taking them over himself? I suspected the answer to that question would be far higher than I’d ever thought.
    “Morning Melanie,” Betty offered. She sat behind the front counter keying data into the computer. Somewhere in her middle