Read Online Catchee Monkey: A Rex & Eddie Mystery (Rex & Eddie Mysteries Book 1) by Sean Cameron - Free Book Online

this?” Laing said.
    “What’s what?”
    “I see what’s going on here.”
    “Uh, you do?”
    “You’re from that bloody message board, aren’t you? As I told the last fan, I don’t like to talk about Derek Lawrence. I’ve moved on. I don’t care about the show. And I don’t know what the characters would be up to today, but if you must know, half of them would probably be dead by now.”
    Eddie nudged Rex and smiled. “That’s what I said.”
    Rex snapped out of his frozen state. “Now that Lawrence is dead, do you regret the way things turned out?”
    “I only regret one thing, saying yes to working with the git. That man knew nothing about character. He was a journo who got lucky when the rights to his book were picked up. He wasn’t a fiction writer. That’s why he never worked again. Because he couldn’t come up with an original story. He just read the newspaper and stole from it.”
    “You still seem pretty mad about it,” Eddie said.
    “What are you getting at?”
    “Did you kill Derek Lawrence?” Rex said.
    “Rex!”
    “Where were you on the night of October twenty-eighth?”
    “Stop talking, Rex,” Eddie begged.
    Laing stared at the pair. His face emotionless. He took a slow sip of his drink. He grinned and let out a chuckle. Rex chuckled with him. Laing’s reaction turned into a belly laugh. Rex joined in. Their laughter escalated until they both cried. They laughed for so long, Eddie squirmed at the idea they were laughing at him.
    Laing stood up. “You boys ask some weird questions. I’m gonna take a potty break.” He wobbled to the men’s room as his laugh calmed down.
    Eddie leaned in. “What’s funny?”
    “I don’t know,” Rex said in a panic. “I was laughing because he was laughing.”
    “This is a dead end. Laing’s got no motive for killing Lawrence. He’s moved on. What a waste of time.”
    Rex finished his beer and let out a burp.
    “And a waste of money,” Eddie said.
    The bar bell rang. “Time gentleman, please,” called the landlord.
    “You paid yet?”
    “No, they said we could pay at the end. I love country folk.”
    “Let’s go.”
    “Leave? But John — ”
      Eddie grabbed Rex’s shoulder. “Can afford it.”
    As Laing left the men’s room he saw Rex and Eddie pass by.
    “Leg it,” Eddie shouted.
    “Bye John,” Rex said as Eddie pulled him through the door.
    ***
    In the morning, Eddie picked up Rex, and they drove to the office.
    “I’ve been thinking about what Laing said.”
    “Eddie, I really think the message board doesn’t want to know about the characters being dead.”
    “Not that. He said Lawrence based his stories on what he read in the newspaper. If we get our hands on what he was writing when he died, we could find out what he was involved in, and possibly a motive.”
    “You think someone killed him for writing about them?”
    “Maybe. The only problem is, I don’t know how to get our hands on what he wrote.”
    Rex’s eyes lit up. “The filing cabinet in our office.”
    “We had his writing and you didn’t say anything?”
    “I said, what do you want me to do with all this paper, and you said chuck it.”
    Eddie tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “You threw it out?”
    “No.”
    “Thank God.”
    “I got Harold the cleaner to do it.”
    Eddie put his foot down, which gave the car just enough oomph to speed up a few extra miles per hour. They rushed into the office and pulled the filing cabinet’s top draw open. A lone pencil rolled to the front. All four draws were empty.
    Eddie stared at Rex. “Guess someone’s gonna have to go through the wheelie bin.”
    ***
    The wheelie bin was full of used packages, papers, Styrofoam cups, and rotten food. Rex jumped right in without hesitation and searched for Lawrence’s papers. Each time he swirled the contents around, he’d release new smells.
    Eddie held out a black bin bag as Rex pulled stacks of papers from the mess and chucked them into the bag.