Beauty to Die For and Other Mystery Shorts Read Online Free PDF Page B

door. They heard the chain unlatch and she opened it again. After they went inside, she looked both ways outside to ensure the way was clear before closing the door and locking it again.
    “Want some sweet tea?” She led them through the tiny living room into an equally small kitchen that was dimly lit. The kitchen table only had three chairs. “Sit down.” It sounded like an order. She was clad in a faded housedress and wore her thin gray hair pulled back. It was held in place with a plastic headband. She poured three glasses of sweet tea.
    “How do you know Victor?” Cameron asked. “He’s the PR man for the state police in Pittsburgh. When I met him, he was having lunch with the captain, Ralph—”
    “Ellicott is an ass.” She set the glasses in front of Joshua and Cameron. “He buried my daughter’s murder. Wouldn’t be surprised if he had something to do with it. That’s the only reason Victor puts up with him. He keeps hoping that he’ll dig something up on Ellicott and his dirty bag of tricks to nail the bastard. When he called me, he said you were the one.”
    “The one?” Cameron asked.
    “The first one Victor ever met with the guts to go up against Ellicott and call him out for what he is,” she said over the top of her glass. “No one has ever done that before, in all the more than a dozen years Victor has worked for him.”
    “Who’s your daughter?” Joshua asked.
    “Angela Jarvis.” The old woman swallowed. “My name is Becky, by the way. Becky Jarvis.” Slowly, she lowered herself into the remaining chair. “Angela was murdered on September 11, 2001. Only she wasn’t in any airplane or in New York or Washington. She was right here in Aliquippa.” She pointed out the window. “Right down there at the shopping center. She’d been working late at the office on account of the terrorist attacks. So she stopped down there to pick up a pizza to bring up home and this SUV came flying out of the dark, flipped on its lights to blind her, and ran her down and kept on going. Witnesses said it was deliberate. Ellicott jumped right into the investigation—took it away from the local police—he swore it was a hit and run by some drunk. Never went any further. He buried it.”
    Cameron noted, “That was a week after Rachel Burke was murdered.”
    “And Ellicott was already a big wheel for having solved her murder.” Becky nodded her head. “Angela swore up and down that Billy Robb was framed. I told the police and everyone that she was killed because of the Rachel Burke case, and they threatened to do the same to me.”
    “You were threatened?” Cameron asked. “By who?”
    “One night when I came home, out of the blue, there was this man who came out of the bushes and grabbed me by the arm. I had a young son here at home then.” Tears came to her eyes. “He said I already lost a daughter. I didn’t want to lose my son, too. So I backed off. But Victor, he was with the Associated Press then, too. He actually quit his job and went to work for the state police, trying to get close to Ellicott to see if he could ever find anything. He called after you got Ellicott mad and told me to expect you to call.” She turned to Joshua. “He didn’t’ tell me about you.”
    “Sorry.”
    “What convinced Angela that someone else killed Rachel Burke?” Cameron asked.
    “The weekend before Rachel Burke was killed, she had a whole bunch of important people at her house for a cookout for Labor Day. It was real swanky. Linda Pryor was running for her first term as U.S. Senator and Angela was her publicist. So she was there taking pictures and doing interviews.” Becky jumped up from her seat and went over to the kitchen counter. She returned with a brown padded envelope. “She recorded something during one of her interviews. She wouldn’t tell me what, but Linda, Rachel, and Rachel Burke’s twin sister got into a knock out drag out fight at some point and Angela got it. Then, the very next