Murder in the Hearse Degree by Tim Cockey Read Free Book Online

Next to the bed were two stacks of books, each over a foot high. I picked up the top book from one of the stacks. Raging Comfort . There was a couple on the cover, swooning together against a maple tree. Or maybe it was an elm. The woman’s raven hair tumbled down onto a pair of ridiculously heaving breasts. Her partner was none other than Fabio. He looked like a sated lion. His eyes appeared slightly crossed. The woman was either in an ecstatic throe or Fabio had just stomped on her foot.
    I looked at a few of the other books. Isle of Temptation . Passion Winds . Craven Heart . Eva took this last one out of my hand and gave it a glance. The tiniest of smiles played over her face. She tossed the book onto the bed.
    “This is not Tolstoy,” she said.
    She picked up a framed photograph that was on the bedside table. She looked at it a moment, then turned to me.
    “Sophie’s father was crazy for her. He loved his little girl,” she said. “I could never see them together that Sophie was not up riding on Janos’s shoulders. Janos built buildings. He was very powerful.” She paused, allowing her eyes to drift in the direction of her husband. “Janos was very powerful,” she said again. “But with Sophie he was gentle as a baby. She was his angyalkam , his little princess. When he fell . . . it was from a building. When he is in the hospital, Janos did not want Sophie to see him like that. His back was broken and he could not put her on his shoulders and ride her around. Janos was not even awake a lot because of the pain. It was two days before he died. But Sophie never saw him. Her memory of him is always . . .”
    She trailed off. Tears came to her eyes but she blinked them back. “We were a happy family,” she said, nearly in a whisper. “I don’t know why this has happened.” She handed me the photograph then moved next to me to look at it, her shoulder leaning ever so slightly against mine.
    The photograph was in color but had faded. It showed a younger Eva laughing alongside a handsome dark-haired man wearing an open shirt. A pair of sunglasses had been pushed up on his head and from his expression he appeared to be singing a song. From Eva’s expression in the photo he also appeared to be singing it badly, but entertainingly. In between the two, cradled in both their arms, was a baby. Itsy-bitsy Sophie. She looked like a little pug dog in a bonnet. There was a lake visible behind them. Eva was in a swimsuit. She had magnificent shoulders. The smile was vivacious. The pair of them—Eva and her husband—were pretty enough to be movie stars.
    “Nice-looking family,” I said.
    Eva took the photograph back and looked at it again. Her face softened somewhat. A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
    “Yes,” she said. She slipped the photograph into her purse.
    Eva and Murray continued poking around the small room for a few more minutes. Libby stood by silently, her hands clasped behind her. She looked nearly as forlorn as Eva. Eva slid open the closet door and stood looking at her daughter’s clothes on hangers. She pulled one dress out and held it up. Her eyes welled with tears. She gazed at it then wordlessly put it back into the closet.
    “I’ve got some extra suitcases if you’d like to pack any of this up,” Libby offered.
    Eva put her hands on her hips and surveyed the room. “No. Thank you. What’s the point? What am I going to do with it all?”
    Potts was stirring some papers on the room’s small desk, over by the window. “What’s this crap?”
    Eva and I stepped over. Potts was holding a pamphlet of some sort. A brochure. On the front was a clean-cut all-American family, mom, dad, son, daughter. The daughter was holding a cat in her lap. A golden retriever was parked nearby. “The ARK” was printed up at the top of the pamphlet in bold black letters, and in smaller text beneath it, “The Alliance for Reason and Kindness.” Potts grabbed up a handful of pamphlets.