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

is personal. It requires a strong stomach—Felicity was definitely not a suspect—and usually indicates a personal grudge. A crime of passion, perhaps? Or revenge?
    Finally the sounds from the other side of the door indicated the heaving was done. The door opened and a pale and bedraggled Felicity appeared.
    “Ah, there you are, “Alice said, well pleased. “I thought you decided to follow that chicken and jump in.”
    “Not a chance.”
    Alice eyed her friend critically. “You have a distinctly green pallor, Fe. Reminds me of that frog we dissected in high school. Remember the little guy?”
    Felicity seemed to remember well, for she gave her a look that could kill, then muttered in a hollow voice, “I hate you.”
    She narrowed her eyes. “That’s it, Fe.”
    “That’s what?”
    “Whoever killed Alistair must have hated the man. Now all we need to do is find out who his enemies were.”
    Felicity heaved a deep sigh. “Let’s get out of here first. My brain ceased to function somewhere between the sight of Alistair’s bashed in face and Elvis grinning at me from your uncle’s toilet seat.”

Chapter 24
    D usk was falling as Alice and Felicity hurried home along Raines Street. The HBNWC was finally meeting and they didn’t want to be late for the auspicious event. Alice had been giving her friend a brief report of her conclusions and Felicity saw she was right on the money.
    “Revenge, huh? So we need to start looking into all the people Alistair ever had a beef with.”
    “That shouldn’t be too hard. I’m sure the girls will be able to spill the dirt on Alistair.”
    “I’m sure they will.”
    Five minutes later they arrived at the house, and Felicity wasn’t surprised to see Aunt Bettina already hurrying up, eager to learn all the bad news. Bettina, Felicity’s mother’s sister, was a large middle-aged woman with a perm so rigid it appeared to have been molded from concrete. It even had the same color.
    “What did I miss?” she asked, panting a little, for she’d had to come all the way from the bakery, two streets away, where she worked.
    “We’re cracking the Alistair case wide open,” Alice told her.
    Bettina rubbed her hands in gleeful anticipation. “Wonderful. Simply wonderful.”
    “Chief Whitehouse has blocked us from the investigation,” Felicity explained, “so we decided to conduct one on our own.”
    “Right. I think you’re right,” Aunt Bettina said, darting her eyes left and right along the street as if on the lookout for the chief. “No offense, Alice, but your father never solved a murder in his life, so why should he think he can do so now?”
    “Virgil is assisting him,” Felicity said.
    Bettina cackled. “That broken reed? He couldn’t find a donkey if it bit him in the patootie.”
    It was an expression Felicity had never heard before, but then Aunt Bettina usually had a funny way of expressing herself.
    As they were letting themselves into the house, the second member of the committee came trotting up. Mabel Stokely was probably the person with the most intimate knowledge of just about everyone in Happy Bays and wasn’t afraid to spread it around. A round woman in her late fifties, she wore Nana Mouskouri glasses and had been a mainstay at City Hall for as long as anyone could remember, serving under five consecutive mayors. Some people even said she was Happy Bays’s acting mayor, as no mayor ever dared take on a piece of legislation without consulting Mabel first.
    “And? Did you catch the killer?”
    She seemed perturbed that anyone would have dared try to solve this murder without her, but when Alice told her they were still sleuthing away, her face relaxed into a smug grin. “I know who did it!”
    Felicity eyed her curiously. She wouldn’t put it past Mabel to have solved the case already. “Who?”
    “Mary Long, of course. It’s always the wife who dun it.” She waved an imperious hand and touched up her hair, which resembled Felicity’s