Death and Honesty Read Online Free

southern drawl she’d affected since high school. She smoothed her pleated gray skirt and plucked at the buttons of her pink sweater. “Such a darlin’ sweet person. What a dreadful thing for you to come home to.”
    “Your own house!” Ocypete put her hand up to her breast. “Murdered. I can’t begin to imagine how you must feel.” Ocypete’s layers of chiffon, tie-dyed in pale shades of orange, lavender, and green, quivered at the thought. “Awful. Simply awful.”
    “Yes,” Ellen agreed. “Awful. But we have a problem, girls, and we have to deal with it immediately.”
    Selena glanced toward the pantry door. “You must be terrified to be in your very own home knowin’ someone was murdered here. Someone you knew!”
    “I can’t think about that right now, Selena.” Ellen tapped her pen on the oak tabletop. “As you know, we’ve been setting aside a modest percentage of, you know what, for years. As a result of our being careful, very few taxpayers have complained about the small increases on their tax bills. Very few.”
    “Yes, indeed,” said Selena. “Less than one percent.”
    None of the three could now recall exactly how the “setting aside” began, but it involved some incorrect paperwork coupled with an accidental overpayment of taxes. The assessors conscientiously opened a separate account for the overpayment, but in their own names. Should a taxpayer question the error, the refund would be available. But a taxpayer never did.
    Over the years, a few select taxpayers received erroneously higher bills, and usually paid without question. The overpayment
went into the setting-aside account and was ready in case a taxpayer filed a claim for a refund, which rarely happened. By the time the three assessors retired from their respective nine-to-five jobs in the army, the post office, and the bank, the setting-aside account had ballooned into a considerable amount. Enough to supplement their fixed pensions. They invested most of the nest egg in a promising new film company.
    “You said we had a problem, Ellen,” said Ocypete.
    “I hope the problem isn’t something I did,” drawled Selena. “I worry so …” She patted her blond curls. “I mean, I don’t think we’re greedy, do you-all? I think we’ve been entirely fair.”
    “Who’s trying to be fair?” Ocypete flipped the hem of her diaphanous skirt over her broad thighs.
    Selena coughed. “Petey dear, I hate to mention this … it’s not that I don’t like perfume … but patchouli, I, well …” She fanned herself with her scented hanky.
    “Don’t care much for your scent, either,” snapped Ocypete, tossing her long white hair over her shoulder.
    “Girls! Please!” Ellen rapped her knuckles on the table. “Our problem is Oliver.”
    The two turned away from each other and looked at Ellen. The property cards from the mottled black-and-white file box that Victoria Trumbull had examined the night before were spread out like a hand of bridge on Ellen’s dining room table.
    “I’m afraid Oliver isn’t much of an improvement over Tillie, after all,” said Selena.
    Ocypete nodded. “Has anyone ever questioned what happened to Tillie?”
    “Villagers assume Tillie ran off with a married man she’d been seeing.” Ellen straightened the pencils in front of her and repeated, “The problem, as I said, is not Tillie, it’s Oliver. He’s triple-dipping.”
    “What can you mean?” asked Selena.
    “This afternoon I met with Delilah Sampson …”
    “Poor Ellen. Coming home to, um, your house and …”
    Ellen went on, louder. “Delilah Sampson, as you know, confronted me the day before yesterday, quite upset.”

    Selena murmured, “I knew it. I’ve always felt that woman was trouble.”
    “I suggested she come to Town Hall this morning when she’d calmed down, but, of course, I had to go off Island.”
    “Of course,” from both Selena and Ocypete.
    “I’m surprised you met with her this afternoon, considering,”