Two Scoops of Murder (Felicity Bell Book 2) by Nic Saint Page A

suddenly found herself feeling queasy. Then, before she could stop herself, had barfed up her lunch.
    Uncle Charlie was still talking, though the gist of the discourse escaped her. Tuning out, she discovered, was the only thing that could save her from a repetition of the frog incident.
    “Now let’s see what we have here,” said Uncle Charlie with relish. With a flourish, he unzipped the body bag.
    The moment she caught a glimpse of Alistair’s ashen face, she knew she’d been fighting a lost cause. The middle part of the man’s face appeared to have been bashed in with a rock. Instantly she turned the same color as the dead man. And then she was running for the nearest bathroom, slamming the door behind her and heaving her entire lunch into the bowl. And such a delicious lunch it had been, she thought sadly as the last remnants disappeared into the pink toilet, Elvis Presley’s face staring back at her from the toilet seat.

Chapter 23
    A lice wondered where Felicity had gone after she hadn’t seen her for a couple of minutes. She’d been too busy checking the body Uncle Charlie was surveying to notice anything at first, but when she turned to ask her friend’s opinion and found her not amongst those present, she started to worry.
    She knew about the frog incident in high school. In fact it had been her idea to do the experiment in the first place, eager as she was to find out what made frogs and other members of the amphibian family tick. She’d asked their biology teacher if they could dissect a frog, but teach had balked, not wanting to do more harm to the animal kingdom than humankind already had. But then a frog had died from natural causes in his own backyard, and he’d relented.
    The frog hadn’t suffered, but three students had, most prominent amongst them Felicity, whose virulent upchuck had upstaged the dissection in sheer entertainment value.
    Alice started wandering the halls, hollering, “Fe! Where are you?”
    “In here,” finally a small voice came from the lavatories, and Alice set her face. It was just as she’d suspected. The sight of the dead body had taken its toll on Felicity’s frayed nervous system, and she’d gone into hiding.
    She took up post outside the door. “Are you all right?”
    “I’m fine, but the chicken I had for lunch is now swimming with the fishes.”
    “Good for him. But I wasn’t talking about the chicken. Are you all right?”
    “Yes, yes,” Felicity’s voice came back. “At least I hope so.” She paused, then asked tremulously, “Has Uncle Charlie finished with Alistair?”
    “He’s only just begun. He says there’s a lot of damage and he will need all his skill to plaster him up.”
    “Oh, God. Don’t tell me these things. I think I’m gonna be sick again.”
    “He says Alistair’s lucky he had such a nice bushy beard. It broke the fall.”
    “Alice…” Felicity groaned.
    “Though of course it’s a pity his beard didn’t extend to his nose, which was flattened when he hit that rock.”
    “Don’t, please,” Felicity pleaded.
    “Oh, well, can’t be helped I guess. If the family wants an open casket funeral what are you gonna do? Will you be in there all day?”
    “Until Uncle Charlie is finished. Seems like the safest place right now.”
    “No need to see the rest. I’ll give you a running commentary,” Alice assured her friend. “I know how you reporter types work. You want every last detail so you can add verisimilitude. Make the reader believe he’s present at the scene. The sights, the smells, the sounds…”
    From the toilet the sound of retching came, and Alice arched her brows. Apparently that chicken hadn’t gone swimming after all. Or at least not all of it.
    She leaned against the door and thought about the mysterious case of Alistair Long. According to both the medical report and Uncle Charlie, the killer had shot the man from point blank range. And in his opinion a killer only shoots a victim like that if the murder