Notoriously Neat Read Online Free

could’ve done if she wasn’t deceased . . .”
    “Something we can officially state is her present condition, being that a coroner’s assistant accompanied us to the scene this time. As opposed to last time we were all together under similar circumstances,” Hibbard said. His eyes beaded on me. “Or the time before that. When Dr. Maji didn’t have an assistant to send along with us. Which he does now, probably because we’ve had a big spike in suspicious deaths since a certain somebody came to the Cove.”
    Hibbard and Hornby went back to exchanging meaningful glances. We’d had two murders—and maybe three now—in town since I moved up from New York. There was poor Abe Monahan at the Millwood Inn last spring, and then Kyle Fipps at the Art Association’s Christmas party. The common thread being that I’d just so happened to be the person who stumbled on the bodies. Well, okay, I shared the ghastly honors with my best friend, Chloe, when it came to finding Kyle. The thing was, though, that I didn’t like what Hibbard had implied any more than I appreciated the looks he kept swapping with his pal.
    “Are you saying I’m some kind of jinx ?” I asked.
    The EMTs shifted uncomfortably on their feet.
    “You hear anybody use that word?” Hibbard replied. “I know I didn’t use that word.”
    “But say he would’ve used it. He might have also pointed out that you’re two for two so far . . . three for three if you want to count the present occasion,” Hornby said. “Not that either of us believes in jinxes. As technical personnel we aren’t superstitious types.”
    I stared at him. The monkey reached a finger up and strummed my lower lip. I pulled his hand, or paw, or whatever it was, away from my face so I wouldn’t blubber.
    “If it wasn’t too idiotic to even discuss, I could point out that you both showed up ahead of me tonight,” I said. “But I won’t. Considering there are more important things going on.”
    They seemed taken aback.
    “There you go getting touchy again,” Hibbard said.
    “We’re just trying to do our job,” Hornby said.
    “Something you might want to explain to your, uh, good friend Chief Vega, since his officers seem clueless about what that job happens to be.”
    That was enough for me. I’d had it with those two big galoots.
    I frowned and pushed past them into the hallway.
    Seeing Dr. Pilsner’s body near the foot of the stairs came as a huge shock. It didn’t matter that I’d expected it. There was no way to avoid being shocked when you saw someone who’d been full of vitality with his or her life suddenly and prematurely snuffed out. And when a life was snuffed out by what looked to be a terrible, vicious act, the insult to the senses seemed all the worse.
    Gail Pilsner had handled the creatures entrusted to her care with a gentle kindness that made her the most popular vet in town, endearing her even to people who weren’t animal lovers or pet owners. But it was clear at once that there was nothing kind or gentle about how she’d met her end. She lay in a heap amid broken, splintered pieces of the banister, wearing a lab coat that had been partially torn off to reveal the plain plaid blouse and khaki slacks she had on underneath. Bent into unnatural positions, her outspread arms and legs looked almost boneless—but, of course, I knew that just meant a great many of Gail’s bones had been shattered.
    As shattered as the rail and spindles that had gone crashing from the stairs to the floor with her.
    I emerged from between Hibbard and Hornby to find the new assistant coroner crouched over the body, a suitcase-sized metal crime-scene kit open on the floor beside her. A slim woman in her mid-thirties with narrow black-rimmed eyeglasses and blond hair pulled severely back from her face, Liz Delman had been working under Dr. Maji for a couple of months now. Though she’d bought a saltbox home not far from the Fog Bell Inn, where I was staying on with Chloe and