Page 70 of A Dead End Christmas
"That's just it. Whoever it is has some pretty good tech skills. That automatically rules out a lot of people. For example, nobody in my family would know how to do that."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "Were we suspecting Ruby or Mike of breaking into your shop?"
"Of course not. I'm just saying it's a clue."
He grinned at me. "You just love saying 'clue.'"
I wanted to argue, but I really did.
"Anyway, speaking of your family, Shelley could have done it without even realizing it. Magic plays havoc with tech."
"Oh. That's right. So, either a tech person or a magic user." I sighed. "That narrows it down a little."
"Sure. Not a lot, but every little bit helps." Jack leaned his head back on the couch and closed his eyes. "I need to tell you something while we're talking about clues."
"Yeah. Me too. I didn't want to bring it up during dinner, because I was tired and hungry and didn't want to—well, I just didn't want to. But I should tell you now." I filled him in about the Petersons' argument I'd overheard.
By the end of my recitation, he was frowning. "How sure are you? I'm not doubting you, but you said you were outside the house …"
"To be honest, I doubted myself at first. I'm so tired, and it just seems ridiculous, but on reflection, I'm more certain about what I heard. And now I feel horrible, because what it tells me is that Emeril has no alibi for the time of the murder." I closed my eyes and leaned my head back on the couch. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but we're going to have to tell Andy that we may have found the murderer."
"Not so fast," Jack said slowly. "I overheard something myself."
I stared at him in growing disbelief as he filled me in on the conversation he'd heard between Judd and his wife. And the thing about maybe pizza sauce, maybe blood on his shoes.
"So, we've gone from having no suspects to having two likely suspects, both of whom were missing at the time of the murder and neither of whom have alibis?"
Jack's phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his pocket and frowned at it. "It gets worse."
"How can it possibly get worse?"
"It's eight o'clock. We have to leave for the town hall meeting."
26
Tess
It was a packed house.
It surprised me, since it was only four days till Christmas. But then again, the UltraShopMart was a critical issue for everybody in Dead End.
Small clusters of people deep in conversation filled the room. As Jack and I made our way through, I overheard almost as many in favor as opposed. I really had no idea how this was going to go. I'd been so busy that Aunt Ruby and I hadn't talked about it since the gathering at my place, so I didn't know which way she was leaning. Since she was the mayor, her vote would hold considerable sway on the town council.
My head started aching from a combination of stress, tiredness, and the noise level in the room, and I winced, pressing my fingers against my temples.
"Oh, no," I groaned. "I can't take another headache like last month."
Jack grinned at me. "At least you have approximately seven thousand different headache remedies to try."
I caught the look of concern on his face, though, when he put an arm around me and headed for the seats. "It's okay, Jack. Just a headache. I'm sure I'll feel better as soon as this is over."
"You and me both," he muttered. "Tigers hate crowds, and the human side of me is in total agreement. The tension level in here is sky high."
We nodded hellos to everyone but didn't stop to chat, and I was careful not to touch anyone. A slight but noticeable path opened for us as we moved—people knew about my gift and Jack was Jack. We saw Lucky raise a hand and made our way to the seats he'd saved for us on the center-aisle side of the second row.
"Hey, Tess. Jack." Lucky's face was grim. "We should talk after this. We caught vandals heading for our boats again, but this time they had guns and took shots at us. Unfortunately, they got away."
"That was a mistake," I said. The swamp commandos were allactuallycommandos—ex-special forces guys from various branches of the military. "They'd have to be fools to come after you guys."
