Pretty Witches All in a Row by Lisa Olsen Read Free Book Online

wasn’t a regular writer; she hadn’t been home to visit since moving out here.  I got the impression that the father didn’t much approve of her lifestyle.  None of them knew who she’d been seeing or who she regularly spent time with.  The mother said she’d look through some of her letters and see if there was anything she thought could be useful. 
    “I talked to the neighbor, Eddie Sang.  He had a good deal more gossip to contribute.  He’s made complaints to the building owner before about her late hours and the smell of incense that makes it into his unit.  Didn’t seem too broken up over her death, he thinks it was her own fault for having something burning at all hours of the day and night.  In fact, he asked me if I thought he could sue the building owner for placing his life in danger for renting to a pyromaniac.  A real charmer,” she added sarcastically. 
    “Nice,” Nick grimaced, “Did he have anything useful on her visitors?  Did he see anyone go into her place last night?”
    A shake of the head was given.  “I’m afraid not.  He didn’t particularly notice if she was there when he got home from work.  He was out with his bowling league until about eleven-thirty, which the manager at the bowling alley and two of his bowling buddies confirmed.  When he got home, her light was on, but he didn’t see or hear anything unusual until he heard the fire alarm go off and smelled the smoke.  He called the fire department and got outside, but didn’t see anyone else around until the emergency crews arrived.”
    “What about the other neighbors?  Any of them see anything?”
    “That’s a big fat nada,” Brady interjected.  “There are still a couple of people we haven’t been able to reach though, so here’s to keeping that hope alive.”
    Nick nodded, it was unlikely they’d catch a break and have someone pipe up with something useful, like the license plate of a car speeding away just as the fire alarm went off.  “Did you reach the owner of the building?” 
    Park nodded, flipping to another page on her clipboard.  “Yes, Wally Tuttle.  He owns several rental properties on the southeast side, this is the only one this far north.  He didn’t have too much to say.  She was habitually late in paying the rent, but always managed to come up with the money.  I asked him why he continued to rent to her if she never made the payments on time and he shrugged it off, said in that business you had to take the lesser of the evils.” 
    “Plus, do you know how hard it is to evict someone?” Brady snorted in disgust.  “He probably figured it was easier to deal with the hassle of her paying late than the hassle of trying to boot her out and fix the place up before he got a new tenant in there.”
    “Okay, what else?”  Nick looked to Brady expectantly, ignoring the little diatribe on tenant woes.
    Brady reached for his own clipboard, handing it over to Gibson.  “We ran the call history on her cell phone; for the most part it doesn’t deviate from the people in her contact list.  There are a lot of calls to one number in the past three weeks though, a guy named Brandon Forrester.  He’s a bartender over at a bar on 82nd called The Graveyard.  Nice, huh?”
    “Okay, let’s see what we can dig up on this graveyard guy, and the two of you go over and pay him a visit.  Also see if anyone can place her at the bar last night.”  The two younger detectives traded a look over the bad pun but nodded at the assigned task.  “What else?”  Nick flipped the page from the cell phone log to the next.
    Brady leaned over, “Oh, that’s the list of clients we’ve got so far, we’re still working on going through the files on her computer though.  Our vic was kind of a packrat, she’s got emails that go back for two years, and more files on herbs, candles, spells and stuff than you can shake a stick at.”
    “Yeah?  See if you can find a spell to catch a killer,”