Free When Magic Is Murder (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 4) by Mary Maxwell Page A

don’t think
it means anything more than that. Dina and I get along fine. We’re actually old
friends.”
    Connie shifted in her chair. “And
you also know the Chief of Police, right?”
    “Deputy Chief,” I said, glancing at
Shane. “That’s Trent Walsh. He, Dina and I went to high school together. But
we’re not here to talk about me; I want to learn more about what happened the
other night.”
    Shane grunted softly. “It was no
big deal.”
    “Except it seems that the man you
argued with was found dead in the gazebo at Connie’s hotel,” I said. “That
makes it of keen interest to the police.”
    “And us,” Connie said.
    “That’s right,” I agreed, keeping
my eyes on Shane. “And that’s why I need to know everything you remember about
the incident.”
    He inhaled slowly, his nostrils
flaring and the muscles in his massive jaw clenching.
    “Take your time, Shane,” I said
after a few silent moments. “It’s important that you tell me as much detail as
you can remember.”
    He nodded, swallowing hard. “Well,
I was pretty much having a good time, you know? Me and Jasper had been talking
about shooting some pool for a while. Since our nights off aren’t usually the
same, it was a rare opportunity to hang out.”
    “And drink a few beers?” I asked.
    “More than a few,” he said,
frowning. “We got pretty door-knobbed, and—”
    I stopped him with one hand.
“Door-knobbed?”
    “Hammered,” he said with a faint
smile. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know how much we had.”
    “Too much,” Connie muttered,
kneading her hands anxiously in her lap.
    “Yeah, way too much,” Shane
said. “But that’s the whole reason we got into it with that jerk.”
    “Did he say something about you
being…door-knobbed?”
    Shane smiled again. “No, but
neither one of us would’ve ever let that broad get so up in our faces if we’d
been sober.”
    “That broad?”
    Connie made a derisive sound in her
throat. “Whitney Morgenson,” she sneered. “Do you know her?”
    I shook my head. “I don’t believe
so. Who is she?”
    “Who is she?” Connie
repeated. “She’s trouble, that’s who! I also think she had something to do with
the dead guy that—”
    “Let’s call him John Doe,” I
suggested. “Until we know his real name. There’s something about calling him
‘the dead guy’ that just seems so heartless.”
    “Okay, so John Doe,” Connie
continued. “I wasn’t trying to be unkind. I just don’t know his name.”
    “None of us do,” I said. “But we will
soon enough. Now that Dina is aware of the tussle at Bier Haus, she’ll be able
to pull surveillance video and get a look at John Doe and his lady friend.”
    “We already know who she is,”
Connie said. “Her name’s Whitney, the former Las Vegas singer who married
Tucker Morgenson after they’d known each other for about a minute!”
    I didn’t know Tucker. Or Whitney.
But I wasn’t concerned about that; I wanted to hear what Shane had to say about
the fight at the Bier Haus.
    “Okay, so Whitney Morgenson,” I
said. “You guys were drinking and playing pool and having a good time?”
    Shane nodded.
    “But then Whitney came over and
started—what? Making overtures?”
    The big guy in my guest chair
snorted. “You can call it that,” he said. “She was basically rubbing all over
me and asking if I wanted to take a ride in her Maserati.”
    “Was she talking about a car?” I
asked. “Or was that a euphemism for something else?”
    He frowned. “Huh?”
    “Never mind.” I smiled and waited
until the fog had cleared from his eyes. “So, Whitney asked if you wanted to
ride in her fancy sports car?”
    Connie scoffed. “More like her husband’s car.”
    I smiled. “I take it Tucker’s a
wealthy guy?”
    “Very much so,” said Shane.
“According to his wife, he owns that big spread up on Coldwater.”
    Before I could picture which
property Shane was talking about, Connie told me it had once belonged