Holidays Can Be Murder: A Charlie Parker Christmas Mystery by Connie Shelton Read Free Book Online Page B

mugs.
“Would it help to tell me about it? Did you come home from your dinner party and just . . . find her?”
“We went over all this so many times with the police,” Wilbur said. His voice almost had a sharp edge.
“I’m sorry.” I felt like a totally insensitive jerk. “I shouldn’t—”
“It’s okay,” Judy said. “Wilbur, I really don’t mind. Investigating is what Charlie does, you know. Maybe she could help.”
    “Well, I—” I’d told Judy about my brother being a private investigator, and that I was a partner in the firm. I didn’t mean to imply that it was really my field.
“Yes,” she interrupted. “I want to tell you about it and see what you think.”
Wilbur picked up his mug and left the room.
“Judy, are you sure this is okay? I mean, well, Wilbur seems upset by my being here.”
    “You know, I don’t really care,” she whispered. She took a long swig of her cocoa. “I mean, I do care. I’m sorry Wilbur lost his mother. He’s shaken up about it, but I don’t think grief has really set in yet. It’s just that I really felt like the target of all those police questions earlier, and I don’t care whether he wants me to tell you or not. I won’t sleep the rest of the night anyway.”
    “Target? Judy, what do you mean?”
    “I guess I’m their main suspect.”

8

    It was no secret that Judy didn’t much like her mother-in-law, but to think she would have killed Paula seemed ludicrous. We were only kidding around.
    “You’re not serious—surely.”
    “Well, let’s just say that the questions were going one way when they first got here—what time did we get home, where had we been, was Paula alone when we left, that kind of thing. Then one of the officers who’d been outside came back in the house and there was a little whispered discussion between him and that chubby, bald cop.”
    Kent Taylor.
    “And then the questions started being about my relationship with Paula. Did we ever fight? Did we have words last night? That kind of thing.”
Oh, boy. I guess I wasn’t the only one Judy’d made little remarks to.
“Do you want to go over it again?” I asked. “Tell me what happened last night, the sequence of events?”
She drained her cup and shrugged. “Sure.” She carried the mug to the sink and ran some water into it.
    “Wilbur and I were invited to dinner at the home of some people we know from church. They live off Rio Grande, in that new subdivision west of Old Town.”
    “Okay.”
    “We left here at six. Dinner wasn’t really ready, so we sat around and talked awhile, drank some iced tea. It was actually refreshing to be around people who don’t drink, after the week with Paula’s . . . you know.
    “So, anyway, we ate about seven-thirty, I’d guess. Then we started a domino game that went on for quite awhile. I developed a horrible headache. I thought it might be a migraine coming on. The game was really in high gear and Wilbur didn’t want to leave, so Norma told me to lie down in their guestroom for awhile. I dozed off and must have been in there for an hour or more. But when I woke up the headache was gone.”
    She’d been pacing the length of the kitchen while she related all this. Now she sat down again.
    “We left their house around eleven, eleven-fifteen. When we walked in the front door, there was Paula, on the sofa.” She squeezed her eyes shut like she wanted to erase the picture. “You know, at first I thought she’d passed out there. Her head was on a pillow and one arm and one leg kind of hung over the edge. She was just, you know, sprawled out. Wilbur and I were just talking about whether to wake her up to go to bed when I noticed the blood.”
She paused and swallowed.
“Wilbur wanted to revive her. He kept shaking her. I called 911 but she was already . . .”
“It must have been so frightening.”
“It was. Charlie, I’ve only ever seen one dead person, and that was at a funeral home. This was . . . really . . .”
“It’s