Murder In the Past Tense (A Giorgio Salvatori Mystery Book 2) Read Free

Angie stepped past him, landing a brief kiss on his cheek. “And I’ve decided to go back to church next week.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yes,” she said, a tear forming. “If it was God’s will when I got pregnant, then I have to accept that it was God’s will when I lost the baby. I’ll be okay, Joe. I have you and the kids. I couldn’t ask for more.” She brushed the tear away and patted his arm. “Now, I think you should take a break. I’m sure there’s a football game on somewhere in the country.”
    He laughed. “Okay. You’re the boss.”
    She tapped his nose with her index finger. “Yes, and don’t you forget it.”
    She started to leave the room, when he grabbed her hand.
    “You do know that it’s Monday morning, and there isn’t a football game being played any where in the country.”
    She smiled coyly. “Then you could go pay bills,” she said with a lift to her delicate eyebrows. “They’re all laid out on the desk.”
    “You did that on purpose,” he said with a grimace.
    Her eyes merely twinkled as she pulled her hand away and left the room.
    He finished tightening the last screw on the safety latch, feeling a sense of accomplishment. His last project would be to build a dog yard for Grosvenor, the abused Basset Hound he’d rescued from the county animal shelter. Giorgio had acted on impulse that day, saving the young canine only a day before he was scheduled to be euthanized. And now the poor dog would be tortured daily by a bunch of screaming toddlers that would overrun their house.
    Giorgio’s cell phone rang just as he tucked his toolbox into a cupboard. It was his partner, Detective Swan.
    “Hey, Chuck, what’s up?”
    “I know you’ll be back to work next week, but I thought you’d like to be in on this,” Swan said. “They just found another body at the monastery and called us in. I’m up there now.”
    Giorgio dropped into one of the kitchen chairs, a heaviness spreading across his chest.
    “Where?” he murmured.
    “An abandoned well. I don’t think it has anything to do with the Mallery Olsen case,” Swan was quick to say. “Apparently this body isn’t much more than a bunch of bones. The demolition crew found it. We’ve called in the Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Team to help get it out. They just arrived. Anyway, I thought maybe you’d like a break from housework.”
    Giorgio smiled with relief. “Give me five minutes to change.”             

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    It was almost noon by the time Giorgio emerged onto his front step. He was greeted by a bank of storm clouds rolling in. He paused along the walkway to reposition a holiday reindeer that had fallen over on the front lawn. Then, he climbed into his police-issued sedan and started the engine.
    Giorgio had moved his family from New York four years earlier, after his partner had been killed in a standoff with gunrunners, and Giorgio had suffered a bullet wound to the chest. Their destination, Sierra Madre, nestled at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in the Los Angeles basin in Southern California. With only sixteen thousand residents, it’s a town where people know each other mostly through school, scouting and other community activities.
    The move was supposed to give Giorgio a more relaxed work schedule and a break from the horrific crimes that had become a part of his everyday life in New York. Until recently, Sierra Madre had been known largely for its enormous wisteria vines and the historic Pinney House, an old Victorian home that had been the location for several movies. But the murders connected to the Mallery Olsen case had suddenly given the town a sordid past that few would be proud of.
    Now, here he was again, about to head up Sunnyside Avenue to view another body on the grounds of St. Augustine’s Monastery.
    As Giorgio backed out of his driveway, he thought it was too soon to be going back to the place where he and his brother Rocky had