Free Murder With A Chaser (Microbrewery Mysteries Book 2) by Belle Knudson Page A

face not changing one bit.
                  There are those who lie with such impunity that those in their audience often feel as though they have no right to contradict them. Here was just such a case. There's no other way to account for the fact that I actually felt bad about telling him he was full of it. So I didn’t.
                  "What happened right before that?" I said.
                  "Before he collapsed?"
                  "Yeah, what did you see?"
                  "Not much."
                  I nodded at him, and he at me. We sipped our coffee in silence for a moment. It gave me some time to think. Joe Badger is the type who can’t resist putting himself where the action is, inflating his own importance. Say someone – say the owner and proprietor of a well-known microbrewery – were to put Badger into a position where he'd be compelled to put himself in the same room as the murdered man at the time of his murder, would he refuse if he were guilty?
                  "You know," I said putting my coffee cup down, "I envy you. Having gone into that trailer with Campbell. I forget who told me. He must have been a pretty interesting person."
                  "I never went into that trailer with him."
                  "Hmmm, I heard differently."
                  "From who?"
                  "Whom." That felt good. I threw out a name. "Maisie Ward saw you going in with Campbell."
                  "Well, Maisie Ward is a liar. I never had any contact with him during that time."
                  "Hmm, I guess she was mistaken."
                  "There's no guessing," he said. "She was mistaken."
     
    #
     
                  "So no word on the key in the carp?"
                  "None," said Lester Moore.
                  We strolled along the beach just at sunset. Our relationship, if you can call it that, wasn't at the point where we were holding hands. But if there was ever a time to hold hands, this would be it. The sky was splotched with brilliance, and our shoulders bumped as we walked.
                  "You know," said the detective, "I was thinking. Are you sure he didn’t say car ? The key is in the car?"
                  "I hadn’t even thought of that," I said.
                  "It makes more sense."
                  "It does. But I could swear I saw his lips come together to form the p . That's what made me think he said carp. Car would have been an obvious choice, and if he said it, I would have immediately heard it like that."
                  "You do have a strange logic."
                  "Thank you," I said, taking it as the compliment I knew it was intended to be.
                  "But I think I'm right here. We're going to have a look at the guy's car tomorrow. And we're following that lead."
                  I shrugged. "Suit yourself, but I think it’s a mistake."
                  He chuckled. "You're trying to show up my team?"
                  I returned the chuckle. "Just trying to make them work a little harder, that's all."
                  "Huh," he said. "So you think they don’t work hard enough."
                  "I didn’t say that."
                  "Well, you said you're trying to make them work a little harder. What else is that supposed to mean?"
                  I looked at him. He wasn't kidding anymore. "No offense intended, Lester, but isn’t it obvious? Look at the last homicide case you had. Who was it again that did the majority of the work needed to solve that one again? I forgot. Who was it?"
                  "Alright," he said curtly, "that's enough."
                  "No, I'm serious. Who was it? I can see her