Murder in the Aisles
Page 19
“Yeah.” Mark twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “Wallington was simply icing on the cake. With all fingers pointed at Hollis it would look like he had to get rid of them because he’d been found out. What Emily didn’t figure into the equation was you.”
Felicia grinned. “The only thing we don’t know is how she got Dresden down on the library floor.”
“Hopefully the toxicology report will shed some light on that. A slow-acting agent that mimics a heart attack. She could have slipped it to him and waited around until the effects started to kick in and then she got him downstairs under the pretext of getting him some help.”
“Nothing would surprise me at this point.”
“I’m sure the blood on the paperweight will match Wallington’s along with her prints.”
“So it’s finally over,” she said.
“Pretty much. And it never would have happened without you. That’s the truth. You have great instincts.”
Felicia sipped her water.
“Oh, here’s the part.” He reached for the remote and turned up the volume.
“You can be my wingman anytime,” said Val Kilmer, aka “Iceman”.
Mark grinned like a schoolboy.
“Bullshit, you can be mine,” retorts Tom Cruise, aka “Maverick”.
Felicia laughed and looked up into Mark’s smiling face. “Yeah, bullshit, you can be mine.”
“I just might like that,” he said before his mouth covered hers.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The morning of the presidential inauguration was bitter cold. The forecast called for temperatures in the low teens. But the sky was a clear crystal blue and the bone-chilling weather didn’t deter the enthusiastic crowd from gathering to celebrate the second term of their beloved president.
The president had been provided with possible candidates for a replacement for Dr. Wallington. The new appointee would be in place within the next few weeks, barring any problems with the Senate.
Emily Windsor wouldn’t stand trial for the murders and the attempted murder of Felicia as she ultimately confessed to cutting her brake lines, which was confirmed by a search of her computer. Her lawyer would plead her as insane. Who could dispute that? The toxicology report confirmed that she’d used succinylcholine (SUX for short), a neuromuscular paralytic drug that would have been totally overlooked if murder had not been on the table. She admitted to luring Dresden down on the floor under the guise that she’d tucked damning information on Hollis in one of the volumes. She injected him with the drug and he was paralyzed within minutes and dead shortly thereafter.
Felicia had fully recovered from her ordeal and was back at work and actively looking for a replacement for Emily. The search process that she’d gotten from Lucy would come in handy after all, and if there was anything positive that came from all of the ugliness, it was that the library was aggressively upgrading its security system, including in the tunnels.
Felicia and many of the staff had box seats close to the stage. Bundled in her black mink coat and matching hat she was almost outdone by Harriette in her fox coat, hat and muff.
Security was extra tight. Everywhere that she looked there was an officer, a member of the military or secret service on post. The bands and choirs had played and sung, and before the swearing in was a reading from the Poet Laureate.
When Steven Hollis took to the podium, Felicia wondered what the crowd would think if they knew the havoc and destruction that had been inflicted because of him. He was rather ordinary Felicia thought, but she guessed he wasn’t ordinary to Emily. Hurt and betrayal were powerful emotions that could get twisted beyond a person’s control.
Steven’s even baritone reverberated across the Great Lawn, carried along the frigid air through the powerful, strategically placed speakers. Felicia tried to concentrate on the poetic words but her thoughts continued to drift to Mark Rizzo and the lightning speed with which their relationship had gone from zero to one hundred.
It’s funny the things that bring two very different people together, she mused. Would it last? Who knew? One day at a time. She still had baggage to unpack about that night all those years ago. And she wasn’t sure if Mark was ready to see the contents.
Rousing applause jerked her from her daydreaming. Steven was thanking the audience.
“I wanted to wait until our boy up there was done.”
Felicia turned and Mark was hunched down next to her. “Everything okay?”
He lowered his voice. “We have another murder and I could use your insight.”
“Whatever I can do to help, Detective,” she said.
Mark smiled, cupped her elbow and helped her to her feet.
About the Author
Donna Hill writing as Olivia Hill began her career in 1987 writing short stories for the confession magazines. Since that time she has more than 70 published titles to her credit when her first novel was released in 1990, and is considered one of the early pioneers of the African American romance genre. Three of her novels have been adapted for television. She has been featured in Essence, the New York Daily News, USA TODAY, Today’s Black Woman and Black Enterprise, among many others. She has appeared on numerous radio and television stations across the country and her work has appeared on several bestseller lists, including Essence, Emerge and The Dallas Morning News, among others. She has received numerous awards for her body of work—which cross several genres—including the Career Achievement Award and she was the first recipient of the Trailblazer Award. She received the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Award, the Gold Pen Award and others, as well as commendations for her community service during her tenure as Director for Kianga House—a transitional residence for homeless teen mothers and their children. Donna co-wrote the screenplay Fire, which enjoyed limited theater release before going to DVD. As an editor she has packaged several highly successful novels and anthologies, two of which were nominated for awards. She served as a writing instructor at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center in New York. Donna has been a writing instructor with the Elders Writing Program sponsored by Medgar Evers College through Poets & Writers. Donna is a graduate of Goddard College with an MFA in Creative Writing and is currently in pursuit of her Ph.D. in Secondary & Adult Education. She is an Adjunct Professor of English at Essex County College, Baruch College and Medgar Evers College.
Donna lives in Brooklyn with her family.
If you loved this book, then you’re sure to love these Samhain favorites as well!
Good art is subjective. Bad art can be positively deadly.
The Randi Lassiter Series, Book 1
Randi Lassiter is twenty-nine, divorced, and remarkably content with her nonexistent social life. Mainly because she moonlights for an attorney, nabbing adulterers—like her ex—with her camera.
When she stumbles across a mutilated body, it takes fast talking to convince the arrogant detective she’s not a suspect. One look at him, and she pegs him as a guy who uses his sexy smirk to separate women from their panties.
When Detective Jon Bricksen is named the lead investigator of the first murder this microscopic town has seen in forty years, he questions his decision to leave the death and violence of Milwaukee behind. Randi’s cleavage—and her questionable sleuthing skills—aren’t making his job any easier.
Theirs is a partnership of aggravation until her small-town network results in critical progress. Forced into an uneasy alliance, they battle a growing attraction—and a killer who’s out to make them the stars of his next piece of deadly performance art.
Warning: Prepare for a thrill ride of disturbing plot twists, profanity, dirty thoughts, and filthy behavior. Who knew small-town life could be this exciting?
Danger ignites a passion neither of them can refuse.
Ava Hill learned early in life that to survive, she has to be twice as smart, twice as ruthless as t
hose who seek to undermine her. And as the widow of a mob boss with a daughter to raise, nothing is more important than protecting what’s hers.
Her determination to shield her child from the ugliness of her past takes a hit when a man claiming to be her late husband’s son barges through her front door.
Dominic Sambarino demands half of her daughter’s inheritance. Ava wastes no time showing him she’ll come out swinging with everything she has. But no amount of fight in the world can prepare her for the instant, smoldering chemistry between the two of them.
A friend’s invitation for a weekend getaway is a welcome chance to regroup, or so Ava thinks. But she soon finds herself caught in a circle of her dead husband’s secrets and lies that threaten to cost her everything. And her only safe haven is the one place she vowed she’d never go—Dominic’s arms.
Warning: Strong language, graphic sex scenes between a woman whose well-ordered life is turned upside down by the only man with arms strong enough to catch her when she falls.
They have each other’s backs…until love pulls the trigger.
Lights and Sirens, Book 3
Great Barrington beat cops Jackson Ford and Marisol de la Espada enjoyed a seamless partnership for a decade, guarding each other’s backs, predicting each other’s moves. Until they sent it all to hell with a gesture of comfort that turned romantic. Not only was the sex awkward—terrible, even—it messed with their focus. And Jack was shot.
Four months later, Jack has been cleared for active duty, but beneath his barely mended body, he’s barely holding it together. Because once the paramedics tore his blood-soaked body out from under Marisol’s hands, she practically disappeared.
Since that day, Marisol has done nothing but replay every mistake she made over and over in her mind. As she and Jack grope through the pain, the guilt, and the fog of PTSD for the key to healing their partnership, they begin to wonder if love is enough to heal the trauma, or if they’re destined to blow their partnership—and any chance at love—all to pieces.
Warning: This book contains two hot, effed-up cops, bad sex that turns good, good sex that turns bad, and some real-talk PTSD.
eBooks are not transferable.
They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
Murder in the Aisles
Copyright © 2015 by Donna Hill
ISBN: 978-1-61923-067-5
Edited by Latoya Smith
Cover by Erin Dameron-Hill
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: December 2015
www.samhainpublishing.com