Small Town Shock (Some Very English Murders Book 1)

Small Town Shock (Some Very English Murders Book 1) Read Free Page A

Book: Small Town Shock (Some Very English Murders Book 1) Read Free
Author: Issy Brooke
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come and visit her new life in the
country.
    No one had. Few had even kept in contact, and the sporadic
one-sided phone calls soon died away. Without the gossip of London life and
work to glue the conversations together, it was obvious how little Penny had in
common with her old acquaintances.
    “I’ve had more contact with a dead body than my so-called friends
of twenty years,” she said to Kali as she followed her into the kitchen to make
a cup of tea. “Friends? Huh.”
    But surely it was partly her own fault that she hadn’t yet
made any new friends. She’d had to creep around with the dog, skulking in
shadowy corners, so she wasn’t meeting people that way. She didn’t go to any
clubs or groups. She’d even been shopping in the nearby city of Lincoln rather
than visit the local butcher’s and greengrocer’s places in the town.
    Kali cocked her head to one side and looked at her, her
brow furrowed. “Yeah, I know how you feel,” Penny told her. After her brew she
would have to trap Kali in the living room and head up in her car to Lincoln to
make her statement to the police.
    Then what?
    She was here to make big changes in her life, she reminded
herself. She had to move on from the shallow city stress that was dragging her
down. Reconnect with her careful art student self who had dreamed of rainbows
and unicorns. She needed to get rid of her black and grey suits, her kitten
heels, her severe hair style, her hour-by-hour plans for her days.
    She needed to be free and happy and relaxed and “find
herself.”
    It was a shame that she had found a corpse instead.
     

Chapter Two
     
     
     
    It was only Monday morning and Penny was already exhausted.
These were not the relaxing retirement days that she had planned for. At this
rate, she’d never get her blood pressure down to a sensible level.
    Penny had woken at silly o’clock and taken hyperactive Kali
for a quick scoot out of town, although she stuck to the roads this time. It
didn’t seem like enough exercise for the buoyant dog, but how else could she do
it? She looked at Kali’s sad face as she pulled her back into the cottage again.
Her whole body was saying, “Let’s go out again! Let’s climb hills and chase
rabbits and bark at shadows and have fun all day long!”
    “Maybe it would be fairer if I took you back to the rescue
centre,” she said sadly, unclipping the lead. Was it selfish of Penny to keep
her? She had to do the best thing for the dog, regardless of whether she felt
as if she had “failed.”
    Kali froze. She didn’t understand words but she could
certainly tell if something was wrong. Her eyebrows furrowed and she looked
scared.
    Penny sighed and rubbed the dog’s head. “I’m sorry. I need
to learn how to handle you, don’t I? They did say you could take a few months
to settle in. But will you ever stop trying to attack every other dog that you
see? They don’t mean you any harm. I promise.”
    Kali sneezed, licked her own nose, and wiped it on Penny’s
hand as a gift.
    Penny shuddered and straightened up. Maybe there were dog
training classes locally. She had no idea what went on in the town – and
yesterday’s melodrama had convinced her that she needed to get more involved in
the community. She didn’t even know who the dead man was. At the police
station, they’d given his name as a local farmer called David Hart. Cath
Pritchard, the kind plain-clothes police officer, had mentioned that she lived
in the town, too. So Penny knew the names of two local residents … but one
didn’t really count any longer, being recently deceased and all that.
    Kali gave her another baleful look as Penny left the house.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the dog, with genuine feeling. Dogs came programmed to
cause maximum guilt, apparently. “We’ll go out in the car later, maybe. Okay?”
    Penny walked down along River Street. The terraced cottages
were long and low, built in the local yellow stone, with cramped on-street
parking

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