I Spy a Sabotaged Scaffold E-Book

J.J. Brass

• Herausgeber: Rainbow Crush
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Elise Golden can’t take it anymore! The flat above hers is being renovated, and she can’t stand the banging overhead—not to mention all the dirt, dust and danger disrupting their peaceful small-town courtyard. When one of the contractors is badly injured due to sabotaged scaffolding, it’s up to Elise the Courtyard Clairvoyant to figure out who is to blame. Was it love, money, or jealousy that led the culprit to make an attempt on a young man’s life? I Spy a Sabotaged Scaffold is the second book in The Courtyard Clairvoyant Mysteries, a small-town paranormal cozy mystery series featuring a great cast of LGBTQIA characters!

Leseprobe

I Spy a Sabotaged Scaffold

© 2017 by J.J. Brass

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.

Cover design © 2017

First Edition 2017

I Spy a Sabotaged Scaffold

The Courtyard Clairvoyant Mysteries

Book Two

By J.J. Brass

One

Elise Golden rolled over in bed and covered her head with a pillow. “No more banging!” she hollered. “You’re driving me crazy!”

Her niece sidled up to her bedroom door and said, “Coffee’s made, if you’re interested.”

Elise removed the pillow from her face to find Val wearing a simple blue tank top and 1950s-inspired pyjama bottoms adorned with images of vinyl records, juke boxes, poodle skirts and pompadours. She leaned against the door frame with her eyes half-closed, apparently too tired to stay upright with the help of crutches alone.

“I don’t want coffee,” Elise told her niece. “I want sleep!”

“Well, I don’t think you’re going to get much of that around here.”

“What time is it?” Rolling toward her bedside table, Elise fixed her gaze on the clock. “Not yet 7:30, and already the Five Chinese Brothers are at it upstairs.”

“Auntie!” Val admonished. “Don’t call them that!”

“You’re right,” Elise said. “There are only two of them.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Val grumbled.

Elise stuck her head back under the pillow and growled, “They’re Chinese and they’re brothers. Close enough.” The banging stopped for a moment and Elise came to her senses, peeling the pillow from her head. “You’re right, doll. Of course you’re right. I shouldn’t make fun.”

“Anyway,” Val added. “It’s not Dirk and Magnum’s fault they’re making such a racket. They’re just doing their job. It’s Tom who hired them. If you’re going to be mad at anyone, be mad at your landlord.”

“Wait, wait, back up,” Elise said as she sat up in bed. “Dirk and Magnum? That can’t be their real names.”

“That’s how they introduced themselves”

“Their parents can’t have named them that,” Elise went on. “Can you imagine naming your children Dirk and Magnum? Glory!”

“Lots of people change their names,” Val said with a shrug. “Anyway, looks good on the side of a van, don’t you think? Who wouldn’t hire a couple contractors called Dirk and Magnum?”

Elise ushered herself into the bathroom, and that’s when the boys upstairs fired up the power tools. The sound was so surprising she almost jumped off the bowl. Elise wasn’t generally the nervous sort, but there was something about being woken up by the sounds of crashing and hammering overhead that really put her on edge. The renovation of the flat upstairs had only been going on for three days, and already the jarring sizzle of the power saw made her want to bury herself in a hole and never come out.

“I can’t handle another day of this,” Elise told her niece as she entered the kitchen. “Let’s go out, do something fun, just the two of us. Take the train to the big city, go out on the town!”

“Sorry, can’t,” Val said. “I’ve got this huge project due on Friday, and you know what Cindy’s like: she’ll take one look at my work and request forty thousand changes. So, really, I need to get it done tonight so I’ve got all day Thursday for fixes.”

Elise held a fist in the air, “Curse you, Cindy!”

“Yeah, but she pays better than anyone in the business for graphic design, so I can’t complain too much. Can you do me a favour and carry my coffee cup to my desk? I need to get to work.”

Elise felt an odd sense of abandonment as she followed behind her niece with coffee cup in tow. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t go off and do things on her own. She felt she needed Val as an excuse to have fun.

As Val removed the cuffs of her crutches from around her upper arms and hung them over the footboard of her bed, she said, “Why don’t you spend the day at Gloria’s?”

“True enough,” Elise replied, gazing at the flat across the courtyard. “She hasn’t got people banging away upstairs.”

“Yeah, just her daughter banging the boyfriend downstairs,” Val joked.

“You’re funny enough, Val. You don’t need to work blue.” Elise set the coffee cup on her niece’s cluttered desk. “My goodness, this place looks like a bomb went off. And it smells like a trash heap!”

“And you sound like a Febreeze commercial,” Val said as she settled in at the computer.

“This room could use a touch Febreeze, I’ll tell you that much.”

“I always clean up after I’ve finished a big project, Auntie. It’s part of my process.”

“Of course it is, doll.”

The banging continued upstairs, and Elise growled. “I don’t know how you can work with that racket overhead.”

“Two words,” Val said. “Earplugs and headphones.”

“Both at once?”

Val demonstrated with a bright orange pair of earplugs. “First you cram these babies in your ears.” She lifted a set of black wireless headphones off their charging cradle. “And then these go over top. Ta da!”

“Very resourceful,” Elise said.

Val shouted, “What? I can’t hear you! My music’s too loud!”

Picking up a pen and paper, Elise wrote: Getting dressed and heading to Gloria’s.

Val nodded and gave a thumbs-up.

As Elise changed from her nightclothes to a casual pair of trousers and a summery knit, the drilling recommenced overhead. “I could kill you,” she growled, not that the boys upstairs would ever hear her over the roar of power tools. “I hope you die!”

It felt so freeing to rant and rave. Elise so rarely raised her voice, but Val would never hear—not through that earplug/headphone combination.

As she jammed her feet into her trouser legs, she cried out, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! Got that, Dirk and Magnum, if that is indeed your real name? I can’t take it anymore! I’ll kill you both!”

The racket upstairs stopped on a dime. Had the boys heard her threats? Were they on their way downstairs at this very moment to confront her about it? Goodness knows she couldn’t take two fit young men in a fight.

There was a knock at the door and Elise’s heart jumped into her throat. Maybe if she pretended not to be home, they would go away.

No such luck. Another few raps at the door, more forceful this time.

“Val?” Elise called out. “Could you get the door, doll? I’m not fully dressed.”

More knocking. Of course Val couldn’t hear her with all those layers of earplugs and headphones.

She didn’t want to confront the men who were driving her mad, but what choice did she have? Elise quickly threw on her summer sweater and walked the green mile to the front door.

But when she opened up, it wasn’t Dirk and Magnum she found on her doorstep.

“Who are you?” Elise asked the beefy pair in matching overalls.

“We’re the Scaffolding Twins,” grunted the woman, who had muscles galore and sandy blonde hair in a ponytail.

“Family businesses as far as the eye can see,” Elise replied. When the burly brother and sister looked around, Elise explained, “The contractors working upstairs are brothers. Catchy name—The Scaffolding Twins.”

“Thanks!” said the brawny brother. “You are too delish.” His voice was considerably higher-pitched than Elise was expecting of a man with so much muscle. “I’m Brant and this is my sister Wynn.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“We almost went with the Scaffolding Siblings,” Brant continued. “You know what they say: alliteration sells! But people have a fascination with twins, don’t you find?”

“I suppose they do,” Elise agreed. “The children next door are twins. You should see them riding their little tricycles around the courtyard. Oh, they are cute as a button—as a pair of buttons.”

Sister Sledgehammer hadn’t yet cracked a smile. She interrupted the pleasant chat to say, “We’ve got a work order. This wheelchair needs to be moved.”

“It’s in the way, honey. Sorrykins,” said her twin.