The Lady Who Sang High: A Reed Ferguson Mystery (A Private Investigator Mystery Series - Crime Suspense Thriller Book 7) by Renee Pawlish Read Free Book Online

trying to rescue Deuce after he’d been kidnapped, and it wasn’t pleasant. Neither was this. In the distance, the city went about its business, oblivious to the death in one tiny corner of its landscape. It’s times like these that I know I’m not like my noir heroes, who were so cool, and seemingly indifferent, to something like this. Maybe you got used to it…but I hoped I never would. The hot night air stuck to me and the drone of traffic faded as I tamped down my revulsion and focused. I bent down and studied the body.
    The body was leaning at an awkward angle, as if he’d fallen back against the side of the building, where he’d then slid to the ground. His arms were at his sides, his head was tilted to the left, one leg bent at an odd angle. I looked at the wall behind him. No blood or brain matter there. Was he shot somewhere and dragged here? I scanned the asphalt around him, but my untrained eye saw nothing that would indicate that that had occurred. The police would be able to tell if his shoes were scuffed from dragging along the ground, but in the dimness, I had no way of seeing if there was any damage to them. And his body being moved here also didn’t seem likely based on the position of his body. I don’t know a lot about guns, but it was a good guess he’d been shot with a small caliber bullet that never exited.
    I scrutinized the ground around him, wanting to get a closer look, but knowing I’d catch hell from the police if I disturbed the crime scene. With only a partial moon for light, I didn’t see anything unusual. No glaring clue that would lead me to his killer. He was shot dead, and that was that.
    I stood straight and shook myself off, as if his death clung to me like the heat. Then I pulled out my phone and dialed 911. I made a report and was just putting my phone away when Jodie stuck her head out the door.
    “Hey, what’s taking you so long? I want to get out of here sometime to –” My face betrayed me and she stopped. “What?”
    I walked slowly over to her. “It’s Jude.”
    “What? Where?” She rushed toward me. “What’s wrong? Where is he?”
    I held her back. “The police are on their way.”
    “Reed! Is he hurt?” She tried to push past me.
    “You can’t go back there,” I said. “There’s nothing you can do now.”
    “Oh god,” she said, then repeated it, over and over, as she fought against me. “Jude!”
    She collapsed in my arms, sobs wracking her body. I was still holding her when the police arrived.
    ***
    A while later, I was sitting in the tiny chair next to the tiny table in the corner of the store, waiting to talk to Detective Sarah Spillman of the Denver Police Department. Once the police had arrived, they’d cordoned off the alley and escorted Jodie inside the building. The crime scene unit arrived and I watched from a vantage point at the alley entrance. The press arrived, and within seconds of them, Spillman. She had one of her partners, Ernie Moore, bring me into the store, while her other partner, Roland “Spats” Youngfield, went with her. I told Moore exactly what happened, and it took about fifteen seconds. He sat across from me, dwarfing the chair, and seeming aloof as he took notes. But I knew better. Just because he looked like the clichéd slob cop from many a dime mystery – cheap brown suit, gut hanging over his belt, yellow-stained teeth – that didn’t mean he wasn’t sharp. Spillman wouldn’t have put up with him otherwise.
    Moore paused when I’d finished, then started in again, asking the same questions but phrasing them differently. When he kept getting the same answers, he looked disappointed.
    I was getting bored. “How about we go around back?” I asked.
    He stared at me, stone-faced.
    “It’s more fun than being here.”
    He obviously wasn’t thrilled to have drawn the assignment of interviewing the smartass detective, and I found myself slightly miffed at that. I’m not such a bad guy. Since my snappy