Murder in the Winter Read Free Page A

are in the mood for something
different, we order the usual; sausage, bacon, eggs, hash browns, biscuits,
gravy, and pancakes loaded down with maple syrup. Sometimes we tell Rosie to
throw a couple of handfuls of pecans on the pancakes. After all of that, we can
make do until our stomachs tell us it’s time for a snack. A little before noon,
Lou and I left the Blue Moon Diner with our stomachs full and smiles on our
faces. Actually, our stomachs looked full before we arrived, but when we left
they also felt it. I would be good for another hour or so. I checked to see if
I had any remembrances of our scrumptious meal, but found none. Gravy stains
disturb me. A little gravy on the shirt means less gravy on the inside.
     
    +++
     
    Lou and I lowered ourselves into the front seats of my
car and put our game faces on.  As we settled into our seats, I thought I heard
Lightning gasp for breath. Maybe I was mistaken.  At any rate, it was time to
go to work. In Hilldale, the city and county are one, as far as government jobs
are concerned. Lou and I handle any homicide in the county, and the Streets and
Roads Division take care of anything to do with our streets, from fixing
potholes to shoveling snow. As we left the metropolis of Hilldale behind, I was
glad I wasn’t the only one to get the memo about a murder at Overlook Inn.
Streets and Roads must have gotten one too, unless the policy of plowing the
road to Precipice Point changed when the inn reopened. If I remembered
correctly, it was eight miles from the edge of the city limits to Precipice
Point. Eight miles that seemed like twenty.
    I left behind the last house within the city limits,
pleased that the snow plow didn’t stop there, but continued to make our drive a
little more palatable. I say a little because the road to Precipice Point is
not a wide road. Nor a level one. Nor a straight one. Only the lack of traffic
makes the road somewhat safe, but that might change by spring now that the inn
has reopened. If I was to believe the note I received on my car, the drive out
would be safer for someone than what that person, or was it those people, would
encounter once he, she, or they arrived.
    Murder muddled my thoughts as I drove toward the inn.
In a way, it would be hard to murder someone there. In a way, it would be easy.
The inn sets on a couple of acres of land, and there is not much land to look
at, because the inn takes up quite a bit of space. I’m not good at
measurements, but I would guess that there is approximately five hundred feet of
land in the front, a couple hundred feet in the back, and one hundred or so
feet on each side, once you account for the garages. They call it Precipice
Point for a reason. I’m not sure if Precipice Point is redundant, but it is a
precipice. Or is it really a pinnacle? Who knows? Who cares? When you get to
the end of the land, you can either fly or drop to get to the next piece of
land. If you have wings, you might be able to fly across the expanse to the
adjacent piece of land a few hundred feet across the divide.  If you cannot
fly, the drop will not kill you, but landing is not recommended.
    While there’s only one way in or out from Precipice
Point, there are a lot of places to play hide-and-seek inside the inn. Before
that weekend was over, Lou and I would find many of them.
    On the drive out to the inn, I noticed trees on both
sides of the road. Lou called some evergreens, others deciduous. I called them
green ones and brown ones. I have no idea what deciduous is, but it’s not a
disease I would want to catch. While I know some big words, others escape me.
Each morning I open the dictionary and poke my fat finger at some word. If it’s
a word I already know, I keep poking until I learn a new word. It usually
doesn’t take me long before I land on an unknown word. At least, one that’s
unknown to me. When I returned home from our trip to the inn, I planned to look
up the meaning of deciduous. On the surface, it