Free Twisted: A Tracy Turner Murder Mystery Novel (The Tracy Turner Mystery Series Book 1) by Keyla Hunter

for her to complain to Millie that I had pushed her. I remembered that I had some old tissues in my pocket and pulled them out.
    “Here you go. This will make you feel better,” I said, giving me an excuse to move away. The paper tissues were falling to pieces. She snatched the bits from me and cleaned her nose with the soft trumpeting of a baby elephant. Her nose had grown three times its original size and glowed bright red, like a vine-ripened tomato ready to be picked.
    She must have noticed that I had been staring at her bulbous nose because she turned and looked in the mirror and gave it a rub. She rummaged about an overnight bag and grabbed a jug with a handle and a long narrow spout. “Netti pot,” she explained.
    She dropped some pink rock salt crystals into a bottle of water and capped it. As she shook the bottle, so did her entire being. She then poured the liquid into the jug. “Mucus. It needs to come out.” She held one nostril shut and tilted her head to the side. She stuck the spout up her other nostril and held the saline water for a few seconds, catching the fluid that dripped out in the fragments of tissue and repeated the process on the other side. She expelled more water than what went in. Her nose was still very red but not as swollen, so I guessed that the procedure was a success.
    “There. That’s better. We can talk now,” she said.
    “I understand that you were Frank’s…”
    “Fiancée. We were to be married, you know, when the lawyers tied up the loose ends.”
    “Katherine told me about the divorce, and that you and Frank were having an aff… in a relationship.” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and bit my lip.
    “That slut. She can’t talk, sneaking around with that lawyer of hers.”
    “Her lawyer. An older gentleman, white hair?” I tried to keep my voice even. “Is this him?” I asked, showing her a copy of the photograph. So that’s where I had seen him. He was in the Channel 10 clips.
    “Yes, yes, that’s him.” Her excitement reflected my own. “Pooh, she was accusing Frank of sleeping around. People in glass houses, I say…”
    “So Frank knew about Katherine’s affair?”
    “My Frank was smart. He found about it, didn’t he?”
    “How did he find out?”
    “He got a private investigator to follow her, and he got all the shots he needed to prove that she was guilty. Since they both had affairs, the pre-nup would have had no effect.”
    I was quiet as I processed the new information and what it would have meant to the divorce proceedings.
    “You are surprised, huh? She went nuts when Frank told her that he had found out. Swore to kill him. Bet she didn’t tell you that part of it. That cow all holy-holy, thinks everyone else is beneath her.” She puckered her mouth and I thought she would spit so I moved away from her line of fire.
    “Katherine was pretty sure that you had done it. She said that you were to benefit from a life insurance policy. Is that true?”
    She burst out laughing. “Look, Frank told her that to piss her off. He had stopped paying the instalments on that policy a long time ago. There was no policy. Truth was that the man didn’t have a dollar to his name. After the tournament he was going to declare bankruptcy. I made more than enough for the both of us. After our affair went public, business skyrocketed. We were going to start all over again. And now… and now he’s dead because of that whoring slut.” She swallowed a sob that threatened to interrupt the conversation, but thankfully it passed.
    “Do you know anyone other than Katherine who’d want him dead?”
    “BG—that’s before Gina—he had lotsa women. Let’s face it, my Frankie was a good looking guy. Women couldn’t resist him, and it was not like she was doing anything for him. That’s why he had to turn to me. So it could have been any one of those jealous women who couldn’t stand it that Frankie had found his soul mate.”
    I nodded and