Marriage and Murder (Cedar Bay Cozy Mystery Book 4) Read Online Free PDF

any make-up. “I just walked in through
the back door and heard that. What are you talking about? My brother was here
earlier. Momma called me over at the Historical Society and asked me to join
them, but I couldn’t get away because we were having an important meeting. Why
are you doing this to her?”
                “Celia,” Kelly said to
the sour-faced stern-looking woman who had sat down in a chair next to her
mother, “you know I wouldn’t lie to you or your mother about something like
this. Believe me, I would rather be just about anywhere else on earth right
now, but I didn’t want you to hear this terrible news from someone else.”
                “Tell me everything,”
Celia said, crossing her arms over her ample bosom and sinking back into her chair
as if her gesture would negate whatever she was going to hear from Kelly in the
next few minutes.
                “All I know is that Mike
and I drove to The Crush a little while after noon to personally thank Jesse
for everything he did for us at the wedding reception yesterday. The back door
was open, and we found Jesse lying on the floor. He’d been shot once in the
chest and was dead.”
                At the word “dead,” Mrs.
Allen began rocking furiously back and forth and sobbing at the same time.
Kelly could hear her mumble something that sounded like “It’s not fair. First
Herbert and now Jesse. The only two men in my life I ever loved. Who could do
something like this?”
                Celia got up from her
chair, walked over to her mother, and put her arms around her. “Momma, we’re
going to be okay. I promise. I’m here with you. At least he didn’t have to
suffer from some disease like Daddy did. We’ll be okay.”
                She turned and faced Kelly.
“Does the sheriff have any idea who did it?”
                “Not to my knowledge. No
one was there when we arrived, and I didn’t see anything that looked like a
clue as to who might have killed him or why, but Mike and his staff may have
found something by now. I just don’t know.”
                “Well, for starters you
might tell them to find out where Sophie Marchant was about lunchtime. Might be
the first and probably the last person the sheriff would have to interview
about Jesse’s death. Wouldn’t put anything past that French foreigner. I hate her.”
                “I’m sorry, but I don’t
know who you’re talking about,” Kelly said.
                “Sure you do. She’s that fancy-schmancy
French woman who owns the big ugly house on the south side of Cedar Bay up on
the cliff overlooking the bay, the one who wears expensive scarves and French
perfume and has that soft voice and that stupid little French accent. She lives
in Portland and uses the house on the weekends,” she harrumphed.
                “She was always going in
The Crush asking my brother about this wine or that wine and could he recommend
a good Oregon Pinot Noir, something that was comparable to a French Rhone. Makes
me sick just thinking about her and her high falutin ‘I’m better than you’
attitude. That’s one of the reasons why I’m president of the Historical
Society. We’re trying to preserve Cedar Bay and keep people like her and that
monstrous modern looking glass house of hers out of our wonderful city. She
never would have gotten permission to build that ugly house if I’d been president
of the Historical Society at the time it was approved by the Planning
Commission. Anyway, she was always mooning all over Jesse when she was in the
store. It was disgusting.”
                Mrs. Allen had been listening
in and following the conversation. “Celia, you know Jesse had strong feelings for
her. Several times when you weren’t around, he told me he was in love with her.
He even said he was thinking of marrying her. She’s not that bad. He brought
her