TheCart Before the Corpse by Carolyn McSparren

said. “Ida went through our state senator, the sheriff and the lieutenant governor, but you’re good to go. Come on up. You want to stay with me or at the local inn?”
    Geoff closed his eyes. “The inn. I don’t share living space with anyone, much less another cop. You’re paying my expenses, right?”
    “Hey, the GBI works for the public, right?”
    “When we have to.”
    “So the State of Georgia should pay for this investigation. That’s why the legislature gives you the big bucks.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I’ll make you a guaranteed reservation for whenever you get here. Probably be late.”
    “It will be not , Amos. I’m tired, hungry, and have no intention of driving up to Mossy Creek until I’ve had a good night’s sleep. I’ll see you mid-morning tomorrow. You can buy me lunch.”
    “I’ll ask Ida if she’d like to join us. She wants to meet you. For your information, I intend to marry the woman, so don’t be flashing those baby blues of yours at her, got that?”
    “As a favor to you, I’ll keep my male magnetism under wraps.”
    Amos snorted and. “Keep your Viagra in the bottle is more like it.”
    He rang off. Geoff sighed deeply and left fast before anyone else could talk to him.
    Traffic in Atlanta sucked, but it gave him time to decompress and to think about what he was getting into. If the old guy in Mossy Creek actually had been killed, the sheriff and the state cops had destroyed the crime scene and compromised any evidence.
    He preferred to have forensic evidence to back up every conclusion. That might not be possible in this case. He’d have to go on straight interviews and interrogation. What he called ‘comparison shopping.’ Ask questions until something didn’t add up. The old fashioned way. He hated that.
    He wound up fixing himself a couple of bacon and egg sandwiches and tossing his sirloin into the freezer. He cleaned up the kitchen and turned on the dishwasher, then loaded the washing machine.
    He would have preferred to leave the kitchen in a mess and the underwear in his hamper, but he drove himself to keep his apartment straight. He hated facing mess when he climbed out of bed in the morning. Too many memories of waking to the aftermath of one of Brit’s parties.
    He set his clock early enough so that he could spend an hour at the gym on his way out of town, and collapsed naked and catty-cornered in his king-sized bed so his feet didn’t hang off the end. Why not? He hadn’t shared his bed with so much as a cat since his divorce.
    He wondered as he drifted into sleep what sort of woman this Ida was if Amos had an eye on her. Amos had been one of his groomsmen when he married Brittany, and had said during the reception that he felt certain Geoff would never have to return the favor. This Ida was mayor of Mossy Creek, so she couldn’t be a twenty-something popsy, but he’d be willing to bet she was eye candy.
    Brittany had been eye candy too. Pity he’d taken ten years to realize the sugar coating surrounded a rotten center.
     

Chapter 11
     
    Monday evening
    Merry
     
    Peggy gave me a shiny key for the new lock on Hiram’s apartment door while we made plans to get together for dinner, then I dragged down the driveway to clean myself up.
    I expected to find the same mess we’d left last night, but Peggy had apparently spent the time while the locksmith was changing the locks putting the books back into their shelves and straightening the mail and magazines. I really hadn’t looked at the place last night before Sandy, the dispatcher, had sent us out to wait for Mutt, the cop. I should go over the mail to check for bills, but they’d have to wait.
    Peggy had furnished the little apartment with comfortable overstuffed furniture, the sort a man likes to relax in. A decent sized flat screen TV hung on the end wall, and the small galley kitchen looked adequate for a man who didn’t cook much.
    Actually, if I knew Hiram, he probably had invitations for dinner