Death in Room 7 (Pine Lake Inn Cozy Mystery Book 1) by K.J. Emrick

do you mean, you know?”
    He pulled me out onto the front porch and pulled the door closed behind us.  “I was just talking to Horace.  Not a nice bloke.”
    “I kind of figured that out.  I knew him before, you know.  Hasn’t changed a bit.  He called here this morning, before dawn, demanding to know where Jess was.”
    “That so?”  He nodded several times, and I could see him sorting information in his mind.  “Interesting.”
    “Interesting?  How’s that?”
    “Because,” he said.  “I think someone did kill Jess.  And I think Horace was that someone.”
    At the same time, we both looked in through the window, to where Senior Sergeant Cutter was talking with Horace.  His eyes turned toward us, as if he could feel us watching him, and there was something in them I can’t quite describe.  Something dark.
    Something murderous.
    ***
    When my son came home from school one day and told me that he wanted to be a police officer, it was one of the happiest days of my life.  I was so proud of him.  Worried, too, because what mother wouldn’t be, but that didn’t keep me from framing a picture of him in his police uniform his first day on the job here in Lakeshore.
    Even so, there’s been times when I wish he’d picked a different career.  Cutting stones in the quarry outside of town.  Becoming a fisherman in Sydney.  Moving to the States and going to work in Hollywood, even.  He had the face for it.
    As a police officer, he sees a lot of the bad things in life.  People doing bad things.  Robbing.  Lying.
    Murder.
    ‘Course, this time I got to see the evil that men do to each other firsthand.  My own friend, killed in a room at my Inn.  It was just too much.
    The coffee was helping.  It was the middle of the afternoon and in Lakeshore that meant that most people were either at home or at work.  I should be at work.  I just couldn’t bring myself to be in the building right now.  I know I told Rosie that I wouldn’t take the rest of the day off but after finding out that Jess’s death was actually her murder, I had to get some air.
    That, and pick my son’s brain for what the police were going to do about it.
    At least we were alone in Cindy Morris’s Milkbar, just me and him and Cindy over behind the deli counter slicing up meat to make some of her famous sandwiches.  She always had a few wrapped and ready for people stopping through for something quick to eat.
    Tall coolers stood along the walls around us, filled with cold drinks and cold cuts and other assorted perishables.  Rows of shelves on the one side displayed canned food products and dry goods like flour and salt.  Me and Kevin sat at one of the three round tables Cindy had in place for folks who wanted to sit and have a meal here.  She did a pretty brisk business in this little store of hers.  It was the town’s grocery store and deli and gossip bar all in one.  She’d had the walls painted white to match the outside not too long ago, and the wood floors had been waxed just last month.  Cindy took good care of her place.
    “You and I both know Cutter’s gonna try and sweep this under the rug,” Kevin said after swallowing a bite of his vegemite sandwich.  “He’d rather take the easy answer than dig in the dirt.”
    “We all know that.  How that man keeps his job is beyond me.”
    “He must be very well connected, have friends in high places.” He shrugged it off.  “That’s the way of it sometimes. Corruption happens everywhere.”
    I was a little surprised at his casual acceptance of the situation. “Someday that’ll change.”  I really, really hope I’m right in that.
    “Maybe,” Kevin admits, “but that day isn’t today.  Right now I need to find proof that Horace killed your friend.”
    “What did he say to you?”
    Putting his sandwich down, Kevin brushed crumbs off his hands, giving me that look I know so well.  “You know I shouldn’t be telling you ‘bout this.”
    “Yes, but