Read Online Nothing to Ghost About by Morgana Best - Free Book Online Page B

was the mayor,” I said in a low voice. “Helen said he
was the one who was upset about the jewelry theft. She said the
jewelry had belonged to his mother. From what Helen said, she
didn’t get along with her mother-in-law. So, bottom line, Helen
didn’t care one bit about the jewelry, and it was her husband who
was so upset.”
    “ That’s what she told you,”
Tara said, “but if she is the murderer, then that’s exactly what she would
say. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being a cop’s wife,
it’s that you can’t always take people at face value. Trust no
one.”
     
     

Chapter 12

    I had sent Anna Stiles a polite email
thanking her for the article she had written about the funeral
home. I hadn’t expected a reply, so when her email arrived, I
leaned forward in my office chair and peered at the
screen.
    ‘ I need to speak with you.
I will be over soon.’ Short, sharp, and to the point. Just like the
woman herself, apart from the fact that she was tall.
    What could she possibly want from me?
And the nerve of her assuming that I would be at the funeral home
all day, and she could stop by whenever she liked!
    Despite myself, I was intrigued. What
could it be? We had no more reason to contact each other. She had
done her story, and that was that. I did not like the woman.
However, I was grateful to her, because she had written a positive
story about the funeral home, when she most certainly could have
torn me to shreds in the same way that the other paper had. How
much Basil had to do with that, I most certainly did not want to
know.
    The doorbell rang, so I hurried out
the front, expecting Anna. Instead, it was Duncan’s partner,
Bryan.
    “ Hey, Laurel.” He handed me
a black tape. “We’ve finished with this.”
    The tape was my surveillance footage.
There were a few small and discreet cameras throughout the funeral
home, installed by my father at least a decade before. They
recorded onto a series of black tapes that would erase themselves
every forty-eight hours. Dad had installed the security system
after a woman had stolen an expensive watch from her dead sister
during a wake. It had caused quite a scene when the dead woman’s
husband realized the watch had gone missing.
    I took the tape from Bryan. “Did it
help?” I asked.
    He shook his head. “Not really. The
detective in charge of the case said he went over it three times,
and there’s nothing. They thought it would be a good lead, but
sometimes things don’t work out. Still, it was good that we had the
chance.”
    When he left, I walked back into our
tiny security room and sat on an uncomfortable metal folding chair
in front of a VCR and a small monitor. I placed the tape into the
VCR. I skipped around, speeding forward and going back, but I
couldn’t see anything that stood out. I set the tape back into the
machine so it would be erased and recorded on again.
    I was half way back to my office when
Anna arrived. I should have smelled her coming. Like before, she
was wearing strong perfume, this one a heady floral fragrance. It
was a pleasant enough perfume, but once again, there was just too
much of it. It was as if she had bathed in it.
    I admit that I was annoyed to see how
nice she looked, although she always looked nice. Expensive
clothing, her hair done perfectly, her makeup the same, and, as
always, a mixture of small good jewelry and large fake jewelry. It
was strange to see such a muscle-bound woman look as feminine as
she did. Everything about Anna annoyed me, and I wanted to get our
meeting over quickly.
    “ I have some questions,”
she barked at me. She pushed past me and headed for my
office.
    By the time I got to my office, she
was already sitting in the chair opposite my desk. I hurried around
the desk to take my seat.
    “ Preston Kerr!” she
said.
    “ You want to ask me
questions about Preston Kerr?” I should have known.
    “ Yes.”
    As soon as she took her seat opposite
me, she leaned forward. “I’m