Whiskey, You're The Devil: An Addison Holmes Mystery (Addison Holmes Mysteries Book 4) by Liliana Hart Page B
Authors: Liliana Hart
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Homicide,” Lester said, throwing Jacoby under the bus to save himself. I nodded and walked back toward the café without saying goodbye.
The little bell above the door jingled and I was immediately smacked in the face with the smell of grilled meat and pine trees. A fat Douglass Fir sat in the corner, listing to one side, and was covered in ornaments of all shapes and sizes, and brightly wrapped packages of all shapes and sizes were placed underneath for the toy drive they sponsored every year.
The café was divided into two sections—the dining area where four-tops and booths with cracked red vinyl seats were located, and the bar area that catered to those coming in for a quick meal or drink. The wood floor was scarred and stayed sticky no matter how many times they mopped it, and the white paint on the walls had long since turned dingy. Black and white photographs of Whiskey Bayou from more than a hundred years before were framed and hung from the walls.
Business wasn’t booming on a Monday night, and only a few families occupied booth. They all turned to stare at me as I made my way to the back of the café. I was still a hot topic of conversation in the area, and all the chatter stopped as they bored holes into my back. Then the whispers started with a whoosh, and I knew it wouldn’t take very long for the curious to stop by our table on the pretense of asking about my family.
Up until the last year it had always been Phoebe who’d be the most gossiped about Holmes. Phoebe carried it off with a cheeky smile and a shrug of her shoulders. She didn’t care what anyone thought and she did as she damned well pleased. Sometimes I thought she purposefully made the wrong decision just to live up to everyone else’s expectations.
I made it to the table just in time to hear Rosemarie mention Priscilla Loveshack and the fact that she was a murder suspect. Rosemarie wasn’t the kind of woman who eased into anything gently. All attention was focused on her camouflaged tracksuit and animated retelling of how we came across the body.
My mom’s new husband Vince looked at me with a raised brow and I gave him a tight-lipped smile. Vince had been my dad’s captain for a lot of years, and he was retired from the force now. Apparently he’d had a thing for my mom for a while, and after my dad died a few years back he kind of eased into her life as a friend until she came out of the fog of grief. Then he made his move and that was that. I was happy for them both.
Vince looked like James Brolin—ruggedly handsome with a full head of silver hair—and he was extremely vocal during sex. I knew this because of the fact that the walls are thin at my mom’s house.
“They’re tailing me as we speak,” she said. “You know they’ve probably got the whole restaurant bugged and are listening to this very conversation.”
I took the seat at the end of the table between Rosemarie and Phoebe’s date. I didn’t need to look at the menu. Anyone who had a lick of sense ordered half price burgers and dollar beer on Monday nights.
“I don’t think Savannah PD has that kind of surveillance budget,” Vince said. “I’m sure our conversations are safe.”
“At least from Savannah PD,” my mom chimed in. “I saw that 60 Minutes special about how the government was monitoring our every move. Big Brother is watching. Gives me the skeevies to know some politician is sitting in his office watching me do naked yoga every Tuesday and Thursday.”
My mom was an older version of me—enough to where we were often thought sisters instead of mother and daughter. She was in her early fifties, but looked a decade younger, and she’d recently gotten her hair cut in a sleek bob and added blonde highlights just to change things up a bit.
When Phoebe and I had been growing up mom had been an accountant and all around superwoman. She’d worn suits and pantyhose during the day, been homeroom mother, and kept the household running smoothly.
The little bell above the door jingled and I was immediately smacked in the face with the smell of grilled meat and pine trees. A fat Douglass Fir sat in the corner, listing to one side, and was covered in ornaments of all shapes and sizes, and brightly wrapped packages of all shapes and sizes were placed underneath for the toy drive they sponsored every year.
The café was divided into two sections—the dining area where four-tops and booths with cracked red vinyl seats were located, and the bar area that catered to those coming in for a quick meal or drink. The wood floor was scarred and stayed sticky no matter how many times they mopped it, and the white paint on the walls had long since turned dingy. Black and white photographs of Whiskey Bayou from more than a hundred years before were framed and hung from the walls.
Business wasn’t booming on a Monday night, and only a few families occupied booth. They all turned to stare at me as I made my way to the back of the café. I was still a hot topic of conversation in the area, and all the chatter stopped as they bored holes into my back. Then the whispers started with a whoosh, and I knew it wouldn’t take very long for the curious to stop by our table on the pretense of asking about my family.
Up until the last year it had always been Phoebe who’d be the most gossiped about Holmes. Phoebe carried it off with a cheeky smile and a shrug of her shoulders. She didn’t care what anyone thought and she did as she damned well pleased. Sometimes I thought she purposefully made the wrong decision just to live up to everyone else’s expectations.
I made it to the table just in time to hear Rosemarie mention Priscilla Loveshack and the fact that she was a murder suspect. Rosemarie wasn’t the kind of woman who eased into anything gently. All attention was focused on her camouflaged tracksuit and animated retelling of how we came across the body.
My mom’s new husband Vince looked at me with a raised brow and I gave him a tight-lipped smile. Vince had been my dad’s captain for a lot of years, and he was retired from the force now. Apparently he’d had a thing for my mom for a while, and after my dad died a few years back he kind of eased into her life as a friend until she came out of the fog of grief. Then he made his move and that was that. I was happy for them both.
Vince looked like James Brolin—ruggedly handsome with a full head of silver hair—and he was extremely vocal during sex. I knew this because of the fact that the walls are thin at my mom’s house.
“They’re tailing me as we speak,” she said. “You know they’ve probably got the whole restaurant bugged and are listening to this very conversation.”
I took the seat at the end of the table between Rosemarie and Phoebe’s date. I didn’t need to look at the menu. Anyone who had a lick of sense ordered half price burgers and dollar beer on Monday nights.
“I don’t think Savannah PD has that kind of surveillance budget,” Vince said. “I’m sure our conversations are safe.”
“At least from Savannah PD,” my mom chimed in. “I saw that 60 Minutes special about how the government was monitoring our every move. Big Brother is watching. Gives me the skeevies to know some politician is sitting in his office watching me do naked yoga every Tuesday and Thursday.”
My mom was an older version of me—enough to where we were often thought sisters instead of mother and daughter. She was in her early fifties, but looked a decade younger, and she’d recently gotten her hair cut in a sleek bob and added blonde highlights just to change things up a bit.
When Phoebe and I had been growing up mom had been an accountant and all around superwoman. She’d worn suits and pantyhose during the day, been homeroom mother, and kept the household running smoothly.
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