Free Death Over the Dam (A Hunter Jones Mystery Book 2) by Charlotte Moore Page B

Sharon Bennett, was another.
    Mayor Taylor said she had talked to him a while about the extent of the damage, and he had taken her photo in front of the flood-damaged city hall.
    “That’s awful that somebody would kill that nice man,” Sharon Bennett said when she learned the reason they were asking, and then she added. “Do you think there’s still a way to get copies of the pictures he took? I’d like to have that one he took of me in front of my shop, and he told me I could order a print on his website.”
    Skeet opened his mouth, but Taneesha cut in with a brisk, “No, M’am. We don’t know anything about what’s going to happen with the pictures.”
    “Can you believe that?” he said as they walked off. “Here the man’s dead, and she’s wondering if the pictures are going to be on sale on his website.”
    At noon, the first clean copies of the Special Flood Edition of the Messenger were coming off the press and Hunter was suddenly feeling torn between wanting to wait around and see people coming in to buy it, and wanting to go home and take a nap. She yawned. It had happened before.
    “Out of adrenaline, huh?” Tyler said. “You know why this paper comes out on Wednesday?
    “No,” she said, stifling a second yawn.
    “Because of Wednesday night prayer meeting,” he said. “Not that many people go, but traditionally nothing else gets scheduled on Wednesday night that we have to report on. Go on home.”
    The part time circulation manager had arrived with his team. Some of the papers would go through a labeling machine to be addressed for mailing. Some would be delivered to subscribers that afternoon, and many more than usual would be picked up from newsstands strategically located around the county.
    Tyler went back to his office, whistling, and Hunter considered following him and asking for a raise, but she mostly wanted to leave , go home and collapse before the telephone rang one more time.
    She took a paper to give to Miss Rose, and ducked out of an invitation to have tea. Then she trudged up the stairs to her apartment, curled up on her bed with both cats joining her, and slept a deep, dreamless sleep until the phone woke her up.
    “Did I wake you up?” Sam asked when she answered in a groggy voice. “Are you OK?”
    “Of course,” she said, yawning and blinking. “What time is it?”
    “Almost five,” Sam said. “The paper looks great. Everybody in town is reading it.”
    “Good,” she said, waking up a bit more. “And please don’t tell me that somebody else has gotten killed.”
    “It was just one, “Sam said. “We don’t know about the bones in the coffin yet.”
    Hunter yawned again.
    “Have you gotten anywhere with Ned Thigpen’s murder?” she asked.
    “No. All we can find out is that he had a room at the Day’s Inn and his suitcase was there. No cameras, though. Wherever he was going, he was planning to come back and spend the night.”
    “I don’t imagine he would have left his cameras in a motel room,” Hunter said. “I wouldn’t and mine isn’t even valuable. My friend Nikki is fanatical about hers.”
    “And we know that he wandered around Cathay talking to people, and that he didn’t eat supper at R&J’s or any other local place,” Sam said.
    Hunter yawned and exhaled with a big sigh.
    “It you’re through with your nap, why don’t we go out to dinner?” he asked.
    “Why don’t you pick us up something and come over here?” she answered.
    After he hung up Sam frowned and wondered briefly if he should have insisted on a restaurant. He could have said they both needed a real break, or that she deserved something special after all that work on the paper.
    Then he decided maybe he didn’t even need to tell her. She would find out soon enough, and he could act like he knew about it but didn’t think it was any big deal.
    Because it wasn’t really any big deal, just a big nuisance.
    Skeet Borders picked up his daughter from his sister’s house