Murder the Tey Way: A Golden Age of Mystery Book Club Mystery (The Golden Age of Mystery Book Club Mysteries 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

which meant he was talking to someone he shouldn’t be talking to.”
    She had a point. I was a great believer in body language.
    “What else did you hear?”
    Joy blew her nose. “He was setting up a date and reminded this ‘sweetie’ to make sure I didn’t get wind of it.”
    I sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. “The rotten bastard. What are you going to do?”
    She shrugged. “Make him pay. But I haven’t decided how.”
    We sat there quietly until I nudged her.
    “Come in the kitchen. I’ll make us some coffee and sandwiches. Where are the kids?”
    “Zack’s at soccer practice and Ruthie’s at dancing school. Thank God it wasn’t my day to carpool.”
    I found some cheese and sliced turkey in the fridge and got to work. Joy devoured her sandwich and I made her another. When she pushed back from the table, she looked more like herself.
    “Brian Donovan stopped by this morning.”
    My pulse quickened. “Because you chased the dead man last night?”
    “He plans to talk to everyone who was at your house last night. I was too zonked out to speak coherently so I said I’d come down to the station tonight to make a statement.”
    A tremor ran up my spine. I opened my mouth to ask Joy not to mention Gayle, then decided it was too much to ask. Besides, one of the others had probably mentioned her by now. I stood to put my empty dish in the sink. “I have to go. I’ve tons of things to see to.”
    Joy walked me to the front door. She seemed more relaxed when she hugged me good-bye. “Thanks for stopping by. I feel much, much better.”
    “Don’t do anything rash,” I told her. “Maybe Mike was talking to his sister.”
    She gave me a lopsided grin. “Sure he was. By the way, your sister’s sweet. How upset was she to find someone had been murdered in your backyard during her visit?”
    My heart thumped so fiercely, I was afraid Joy could hear it. “Gayle missed the big event. She took off early this morning.”
    “Really? I thought she was planning to stay with you a few days.”
    “She decided to first visit friends, and spend time with me after,” I made up as I went along.
    Joy saw through my lie, but thank God she interpreted it her own way.
    “Don’t tell me you guys quarreled already.”
    I shrugged. “Gayle and I see the world very differently.” Which was true enough.
     

 

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    “They’ve ID’d your corpse.” Brian leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee.
    “He’s not my corpse!” I said.
    “The vic’s name is Leo Lionni. He was a soldier for a New Jersey mob, until a few years ago when he came to Long Island.”
    I shuddered. “A mobster!  What was he doing in my backyard last night?”
    “That’s the million dollar question.”
    Brian watched me as he added, “He was known around town as Len Lyons.”
    The dead man’s cap flashed before me, and the pieces came together. “My God, Len! I couldn’t see his face, but I should have recognized the cap. I never saw him without it.”
    “So you did know him.” Brian didn’t seem surprised.
    “He fixed a few things around the house that needed attending to when I first moved in.”
    Brian grimaced. “Lionni worked as a handyman when he wasn’t doing other jobs—if you get what I mean.”
    “Oh.” I digested that a minute. “Is he the thief who’s been burglarizing houses in the neighborhood?”
    “Looks that way. They searched his apartment. Found a cache of items he hadn’t disposed of.”
    “How was he murdered?”
    “Someone stabbed him in the gut.”
    I sighed with relief as I remembered that Gayle had no blood on her clothes when she’d come into my bedroom this morning. “I didn’t notice a knife on the lawn.”
    “We still haven’t found the weapon.”
    “Oh.”
    “The crime scene people found his position very odd. They said he wouldn’t have fallen on his stomach, with his arms at his side.”
    “Of course not,” I said, remembering how he’d