Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 84002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
They were still waiting on the techs to retrieve discarded messages and any voicemails that had been scrapped, but who knows how long that’s going to take. Still, based on what they had so far, Officer Bailey was becoming more and more convinced that they were wasting their time looking into Melissa Sherry’s personal life.
It’s not like the woman had been some savvy tech expert who could hide her tracks so well that no one could find even a thread to tug on. If she’d been into something that could end her up like this, surely she’d have left something behind for them to find. “So you don’t think this has anything to do with what she’d been hiding from her husband? The fact that she was no longer working at the club for at least a couple of weeks?”
Officer Bailey rubbed his hand along the back of his neck in frustration. He’d forgotten about that. Or more likely had brushed it off as nothing major. Women are a secretive bunch by nature after all, and for all they know, she could’ve been planning a surprise for her husband.
Maybe she’d grown tired of the job at the club. From everything they’d learned, it seemed like she’d only got the job to piss Gil off for losing his nice paying job. What could she possibly have to hide when the whole town, including her husband, knew she was screwing around with Bobby? That right there is the only reason he wasn’t buying into the idea that she was hiding something, that and the fact that they’d found nothing to confirm such suspicions.
He was beginning to wonder more and more as the day went by just what was happening to his town. In the space of a few months, there’ve been two murders when there had never been one in his whole lifetime. Not only that, but neither murder had been of the ordinary garden variety. Both had been gruesome and way over the top as far as he was concerned.
He liked being an officer of the law, liked wearing the badge, and knowing that his neighbors could call on him if they had a need. Before this, his most stressful case might be breaking up a drunken fight down at the pub, or saving an unsuspecting tourist from one of the locals when they got too close to someone’s azalea bushes during the annual July fourth parade that seemed to draw people from all over.
He recalled the days he’d watch some fast chase in a movie and wish for the excitement that he was sure would never be found in this laid back haven. Or while watching one of his favorite detectives shows the longing for something wild and exciting to sink his teeth into.
Now his only wish is for things just to go back to normal. He’d give anything to be sitting on the front porch of one of the two widows who were the ones who kept him busy the most before this, trying to keep the peace between them.
“Well, what do you think it is? Do you think someone was really after her? How did they know she would be on that road at that particular time? Were they lying in wait? What if someone else saw them there?” So far, no one had come forward with anything, and they’d sent out feelers.
Detective Sparks knew that he was just thinking out loud at this point, trying to piece everything together himself, and going around in circles. She’d been the same way when she first started working cases back in the city, so she knew that it sometimes helped. You might stumble across a clue in your own words while throwing things out there, so she just let him go over it all as she tried to make sense of the poetic notes.
Common sense and law of elimination told her that the notes had been written by a man. Women don’t write other women flowery notes like these unless they were intimately involved. And though on the surface, the notes, which had been written in old English, seemed innocent enough. When you read between the lines, they were actually pretty racy. But there was nothing pointing at who may have written them.
By the time she was ready to call it quits, she was becoming almost as frustrated as her partner, but for the first time, she felt her annoyance ease as soon as she got behind the wheel of the luxury SUV her new boyfriend had insisted she drive. Her mind went immediately to the afternoon, and her cheeks blushed as she drove through the streets of town, heading to the farm.
No one had bothered her once she got back to the station, but she wasn’t holding out much hope for the future. She knew that there was no way the people in the small town would just let things go since they all had a tendency to ask the most invasive questions without batting a lash. It’s one of the drawbacks of small-town living and something she’d had to get used to after moving here.