Give Murder A Hand: Lizzie. Book 2 (The Westport Mysteries)
Read Give Murder A Hand: Lizzie. Book 2 (The Westport Mysteries) Online
Authors: Beth Prentice
GIVE
MURDER
A
HAND
The Westport Mysteries
Lizzie
Book Two
Beth Prentice
Text copyright
Ó
2015 Beth Prentice
All Rights Reserved
I sat on my rotting back deck, looking
at Molly as she checked the time on her new watch. Her watch matched the rest
of her. Perfect. It was a designer brand and matched her designer dress, which
was a bit too short, a bit too tight, and cut low enough to show everyone who
cared just how ample her bosom really was.
I looked down at the T-shirt dress I’d bought from K-Mart
and wished—not for the first time—that I could just be a little more like her.
Maybe if I had her budget I’d be able to dress like that. I
sighed. The truth was, even with her budget, I still couldn’t pull that outfit
together so effortlessly. Molly’s my sister and she’s beautiful. We’ve been
told that we look very much alike, but honestly, I am a very watered-down
version of her.
My name is Lizzie Fuller, and I’m the tallest female member
of my family, measuring in at five foot two inches.
Barefoot, Molly is just shorter by half an inch, but that
half an inch is very important to me. Our brother Danny towers over both of us
at five foot eight, but both Molly and I have a much more impressive D-sized
cleavage. I am however, the only sibling to have inherited two dimples. Where from?
Who knows? Grandma Mabel was a bit of a wild card, so we have no idea what’s
hidden in the family gene pool.
The day had turned into a bit of a scorcher which, as it was
summer, I guess should be expected. My deck was a bit old and rotten, but if
you sat on the end nearest to my neighbors, Helen and Allen, it was safe
enough. Of course that had the disadvantage of Helen, the quintessential
busybody, being able to hear everything I said. But as long as I didn’t talk
about her, it wasn’t really a problem.
I sighed contentedly, and pretended to listen as Molly
dreamily told me about a new man she was interested in. Honestly, my attention
was on her dog, a little Maltese Terrier named Harper. Every time Molly came
over for a visit, Harper went out to the garden, and frantically dug in the
same spot. I usually went out and shooed him away, but next visit, there he was
again. I’d decided to let him go for it. I wanted to plant some trees anyway so
he was saving me the trouble of digging the hole. Plus, I always looked at him
with his bright eyes and his tongue hanging out, and thought how enjoyable his
life was. Seriously, when it’s my time to be reincarnated, I want to come back
as a dog.
I turned to look at Molly, still dreaming about the new man,
her eyes bright and her tongue almost hanging out, and right there and then I
believed people really did look like their dogs.
Lucky for me, I owned a cat, and that rule didn’t apply to
cats. Did it? I was about to ask Molly when she shouted at Harper.
“Harper! Get out of there!”
I looked, wondering where he was as I couldn’t see him
anymore, when I realized he was in the hole he’d dug.
“Come here, boy,” she called. He stuck his head up out of
the hole and barked.
Woof.
“Don’t bark at me,” she scolded. “Just come here.”
Eventually he came, but he didn’t come clean. Harper was
usually white and fluffy but right then, he was brown from his shoulders down,
and had dirt stuck to his snout. He also brought something from the dirt to
give to Molly. I noticed her eyes bulging as the realization dawned that she
had to put him back into her beautiful shiny Lexus. I stifled a giggle.
“Oh, Harper!
Look how
dirty
you are
,” she chastised as she stood and
walked towards him. “And what is that?”
“Don’t yell at him,” I said. “He looks so happy.” And he
did. His eyes shone brightly as he trotted up the three steps onto my wooden
deck, and dropped the gift at Molly’s Jimmy Choo-clad feet.
“Eww, that’s disgusting!” She squirmed, moving her toes to
push it back down the stairs.
I knew she was squeamish about things like that, but as she
turned towards me, her complexion paled, she swayed, and then fainted ... right
on top of Harpers gift. Shit.
Shit.
Running over to help her, I looked at Harper. “Good one,
Harper.
Now
what am I supposed to do?
”
I wasn’t good in stressful situations, especially medical
ones. My heart rate increased, as my heart pounded against my ribs, leaving me
short of breath. Calling an ambulance would probably be a good idea, but my
phone was inside the house. Years ago, I’d completed a first aid course, and a
memory stirred about how to put a patient in the recovery position. I knelt
down next to Molly, grabbed her shoulder and shook her. Not exactly the
recovery position, but it felt like the right thing to do. She moaned. That was
a good sign, right?
“Molly!” I yelled, shaking her a little more. “
What the hell are you
doing?
”
She moaned again. At least I knew she wasn’t dead.
I grabbed her shoulder and rolled her onto her back.
“You’re going to be in big trouble when she wakes up,” I
said to Harper, my heart rate decreasing slightly as Molly’s eyelids fluttered.
“Urgh,” she gurgled, stirring.
“Molly!” I shook her shoulder once more. “Molly, wake up.”
She opened her eyes wide and stared back at me, her gaze
unfocused.
“Molly, can you hear me? Molly!”
My yelling must have worked—well, either that or the shaking
I gave her—because she groaned and sat up.
“Stop yelling at me,” she whispered, her eyes rapidly moving
about, as she tried to figure out what happened.
As she moved, a bone rolled out from under her. Harper saw
his chance, grabbed it and ran straight into the house, towards my couch—my
white
couch.
“Harper!” I yelled. I didn’t care how happy he was. I did
not need a big muddy stain on my favorite chair. Leaving Molly to get herself
up, I ran through the kitchen door after Harper, but he was quicker than me. I
wasn’t sure how though, as that bone had been almost the same size as him.
Before I could catch him, he’d run through the kitchen, across the hallway, and
straight into the lounge room. He was just settling into place as I ran through
the door.
“You naughty boy!” I chastised, stepping up to him. “That
couch is nearly new and I happen to like it!” As I spoke, I looked down at the
bone.
As Harper nuzzled it into position, it overbalanced, rolled
off the chair, onto the floor, only stopping once it was under my timber coffee
table. I gave a disgusted sigh and knelt down to retrieve it, wondering what
poor family pet it would once have belonged to.
Feeling around the dirty carpet, I shuddered as my hand made
contact with it and I felt the cold, damp soil lodge under my fingernails. As I
dug my fingers in and pulled the bone out, I looked down at my hands, nausea rolling
in my stomach. A clod of dirt fell onto the mat. The world swayed slightly as I
saw looking back at me ... a skull. But it wasn’t the skull that freaked me
out, it was that I was pretty sure this one didn’t belong to a dog ... or a
cat.
In fact, I was pretty sure this one was human.
* * *
My vision blackened, my stomach
clenched and sweat broke out on my forehead. As the sickening feeling consumed
me, I dropped the skull, sank to the floor and sucked in some air. My body
shook as I pulled my knees up and put my head between them. I vaguely heard
Molly enter the room.
“Lizzie?” she called. “Lizzie, are you okay?”
I waited for the dizziness to stop before responding. “What
do
you
think?” I croaked. “
Your dog just dug a
skull
up
from my garden!
” Panic seemed the appropriate
emotion for the occasion.
“Well, it’s not exactly my fault,” she said, falling onto
the couch.
“Whose fault is it then?” I said, my voice getting louder
with every syllable.
“You bought this stupid house. I told you not to, but did you
listen to me? No! Of course you bloody didn’t!”
“Well, I’m sorry!” I yelled as Harper slunk off the chair
and moved behind the couch, sensing that maybe some of the blame would fall on
him.
“
And
you bought the dog. Did I ask you too?” Molly too seemed led
by panic. Thankfully my front door opened and in walked Riley.
Riley’s my boyfriend. He’s six foot three, same age as me
(thirty two and I promise I’m okay with that – honestly, I am), he has blond
hair and the most amazing blue eyes I have ever seen, but it’s his eyelashes
that undo me. They aren’t overly long, but they are black and thick. To sum him
up, he’s sex walking.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, his deep voice having an
instant calming effect on me.
“Not exactly,” snapped Molly.
My eyes filled with tears, realizing that a responsible
adult could now take control of the situation. Riley took one look at me, moved
into the room and dropped to his knees in front of me. I put my head on his
shoulder as his arms pulled me in close.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice filled with concern.
Reluctantly I pulled away from him and pointed to the skull that had once again
rolled under the coffee table. He moved and retrieved it, his brow creasing.
“Is it what I think it is?” I asked, my voice slightly wobbly.
“Where did it come from?”
“Harper dug it up from the back garden,” explained Molly,
her voice barely above a whisper as she looked at the skull in Riley’s hands.
I thought about those hands and how I might make him acid
wash them before he ever touch me again. Then I looked into his eyes and
thought, bugger it, he could touch away.
Riley placed the skull on the coffee table, stood and moved
towards the kitchen. Molly and I stood and followed him, gratefully leaving the
skull behind. Harper, realizing the danger had passed, stepped out of his
hiding place. He stopped to sniff at the bone.
“
Harper!”
yelled Molly. A second later he trotted passed us, his tail
between his legs.
Once in the kitchen, we passed through the back door and
continued to follow Riley down the steps and to the garden bed where Harper had
been digging. At this point, Harper overtook us all and immediately jumped back
into the hole. I heard Molly suck in her breath as he came back out, another
bone clenched in his jaw. For a dog with no teeth, he certainly excelled
himself today.
Riley took the bone off him and moved into the dirt himself.
I grabbed Molly’s arm as we both held our breath.
“I think we should call the police,” said Riley.
“
How
many are there?”
I asked incredulously.
“I’m not sure but there’s a lot more than this.”
I felt the nausea swirl as Molly sat her designer dress down
on the grass before she fainted again.
* * *
It only felt like a few minutes between
Riley dialing his phone and the police and the television cameras pulling up,
but in reality it had been closer to twenty. Riley took this time to move Molly
and myself back into the kitchen, and gave us both a hot cup of coffee.
Even though the outside temperature still hovered in the
high thirties, the hot coffee did seem to calm the shaking that took hold of my
body. It had been a good few months since I had shaken like this.
You see, at the time I bought the house, the purchase
contract had omitted a few extras I apparently got for free. Like the cat, the
hidden engagement ring, and the stalker. The stalker was the cause of most of
my anxiety and shaking. And of course, the nightmares that followed the day he
had caught up with me, but ... that’s a whole other story.
Right now, I sat curled in the crook of Riley’s arms and
held my coffee close, feeling the heat from both seep into me. Molly had
settled for cuddling Harper. Not a bad second choice, I thought.
The television cameras were set up in my garden and followed
every movement of the police from a distance. I was unsure how they had gotten
here so quickly, but maybe they listened to police scanners ... or maybe my
neighbor Helen had alerted them. I had noticed her peering through her window
as Riley stood in the hole that Harper had dug, her ears flapping with every
sound.
She’d since moved closer, suddenly needing to do some late
afternoon gardening, right next to the fence we shared. Honestly, we didn’t need
the six o’clock news. Once she had hold of the story the whole town would know
about it.
I heard voices coming from the back deck and Riley stood to
investigate.
“Oh, hi. Are you the owner of the house?” asked a male
voice.
“Kind of,” answered Riley. “Can I help you at all?”
“Oh, um ... well ... um, I was hoping to speak to the owner
of the house. I’m Matt. Matt Wilson. I’m a reporter with WIN news ...”
