Read Online Nefarious Doings by Ilsa Evans - Free Book Online

conversation. All of which concerned the victim, and the varying ways in which he got exactly what was coming to him.
    Mrs Emerson, who was an academic before she retired to concentrate on Richard III and the merits of cheese puffs, popped in to announce that it was almost certain Dustin Craig suffered from a personality disorder. No, said Caitlin’s mother Jill, selfishness was not a disorder. Roz Gupta, dropping by on her way to get supplies for the primary school canteen, had heard that there’d been moves to get counselling for the older girl, but the parents had been resistant. Fred and Elsa Poxleitner had it on good authority (aka Fred and Elsa Poxleitner) that parents who acted that way should be charged with criminal negligence. Mrs Emerson agreed, however she felt Beth Craig should shoulder responsibility for having stayed in the relationship. And Lyn Russo, the centre of attention for the twenty minutes she was there,
thought
she might have heard raised voices on the night of The Murder, but there was a possibility that could have been her own kids.
    At eleven am, always late on Mondays, the cafe opened its doors and immediately drew some of the heat. My mother’s offsider began work also; this was Sharon, a buxom redhead whose favourite colours were purple and orange and who felt compelled to wear a portion of each every single day. Strangely, it worked. She took one look at the milling customers and cancelled plans to begin inventory, thus allowing me to escape for some much-needed coffee.
    One Christmas about five years ago, after noticing that the main street was looking a little bedraggled in the festive department, the town council had launched a Best-Decorated Shop competition and then, soaked in the spirit, expended a great deal of money on new street decorations. Regrettably, their choice had not been as inspired as their intention. The local teenagers soon detected the possibilities inherent within the cluster of oversized ornaments, and trimmed them back so that each now contained just one elongated pinecone and two Noddy-type bells. The result was that every lamppost up and down the main street, and a little way out from either end, was decorated with what looked like festive genitalia. Nevertheless, each year the council optimistically erected them again, usually with the addition of a newly purchased candy-cane or holly sprig that was removed the very first night, leaving just the basics behind. It had become a town tradition.
    The competition had also become an annual rite, with shopkeepers the length and breadth of the street vying with each other for the prize of two movie tickets and a photograph with the mayor. Unfortunately, all subscribed to the philosophy that bigger was better, resulting in a cornucopia of festivity that was inflated, often literally, and turned the main thoroughfare into an obstacle course that saw several shoppers injured every year.
    Avoiding our own cafe, and a giant plastic Santa with disturbingly narrow eyes, I strode up the gaily decorated Main Street to a small hot bread shop that had recently opened in the arcade beside Svetlana’s Haberdashery.
Majic Bakery: for all your majic bread!
I ordered a chocolate mud muffin and a skinny cappuccino and took them through the arcade to the football oval out the back. Just across from here was the mansion that had spawned the entire town, now named Sheridan House and used as the community centre. It made a picturesque backdrop, with panels of red brick within creamy render and fat, forest-green domes crowning an assortment of rounded rooms on the second and third floors. I found a bench under a plump pine and settled for a brief hiatus, perhaps even some inspiration for my column, now due in under six hours.
    ‘Well, well, if it isn’t Nell. Look at that, I’m a poet! Responding to poetry in motion.’
    ‘Or sloth,’ I replied, shading my eyes to glance up at Leon Chaucer. He was looking very dapper today, in a