The Gallery of the Dead (Tropical Breeze Cozy Mystery Book 3) Read Free Page B

But of course, I shopped in Tropical Breeze, and I went to school with kids who lived here.”
    Aha! , I thought. Lie number one. If she’d lived in the area her entire life, she knew about the suicides. That kind of thing becomes local lore. And the first thing she did when she had money was buy a dream house. Therefore, she’d been the kind of little girl who wanted to live in a castle. I grew up among many such girls, though I never understood them. Who did they think was going to mop all those floors? Ergo it was doubtful Misty did not know anything about the house before she bought it, yet she denied knowing its history. Of course I was speculating, but knowing the kind of women those dreamy little girls grew into, I felt I was on solid ground. Naturally, I made a note to confirm my suspicions.
    “Were you ever in Whitby House as a child?” Teddy asked.
    “Oh, no.”
    “Never?”
    “I didn’t exactly grow up in high society.”
    Teddy gave her a comforting smile. “Had the house been abandoned by the time you bought it?”
    “Not entirely. A family named Allen had owned it for a number of years. They brought their family here for the summer for a while. Eventually, when the old folks died off, they stopped coming and put it up for sale. It had been on the market for ten years or so when I bought it. As you can imagine, it needed a little sprucing up. The Allens had updated it when they got tired of waiting for it to sell. But a home needs to be lived in to really stay alive, don’t you think? Leave a home sitting empty for a few years and it begins to die. First it’s little things like a bad electrical outlet here and a fogged window there, and then the oven won’t work and the kitchen tap burps and gives you rusty water, and the next thing you know it’s got rats and the roof leaks. I can always tell when a house is sitting empty, without a family to love it,” she said wisely. “It’s just something you know .”
    I quickly made another note: Misty was given to confabulation, as evidenced by her tangential ramblings.
    “I absolutely agree,” Teddy said. “Some things you just know. Shall we go to the gallery and you can show us the spot where you had your encounter?”
    Finally!
    We were about to make progress, I thought, and I grabbed my notes and the voice recorder and had just stood up when the doorbell rang.
    “Now, who can that be?” Misty said.
    “Are you expecting anybody?” Teddy asked.
    She smiled. “An inn is a public place. The innkeeper must always be prepared to open her door to strangers.”
    She swept out of the room, and I looked at Teddy and said, “Damn.”
    “Are you always this impatient?” he asked.
    “I like to stay focused,” I told him, straightening my glasses.
    “Is this how you guys always work together?” Paul asked.
    I looked at Teddy, but he just looked back at me, so I said, “This is our first collaboration.”
    “Yeah. It kinda shows.”
    Regardless of the fact that the subject’s son was sitting right there, Teddy began to lecture me. “When you’ve conducted as many investigations as I have, Ed, you’ll know that the people you’re dealing with have to be treated gently. They’ve been traumatized. They may even have been ridiculed by ignorant friends. We are here to believe them. We are here to listen to them. My policy is to believe first and then check it out later. People know if you’re wondering whether or not they’re lying.”
    “Then we’re coming at it from two different directions,” I said crisply. “In my opinion that’s a good thing. Your motto: ‘Believe everything.’ My motto: ‘Trust no one.’ And wouldn’t it be better to have this discussion later –“
    I had to stop because Misty was back, and she had a drab young woman with her, a stranger.
    “Gentlemen, you have brought me luck already,” Misty said radiantly. “This young lady, um –“
    “Jane. Jane Holowell,” the girl said in a flat, nasal voice. She