Bells On #SampleSunday #BarSinister

Here’s a snippet from one of my works in progress. This is BAR SINISTER, one of the Spadena Street mysteries I roughed out during a NaNoWriMo.

Juss lives in a Storybook Style mini-castle on Spadena Street. She got involved with Abby’s problem because Abby is the cousin of Juss’s new secretary (“a boy one,” as Juss gloats) and Juss is a busybody. DW is Juss’s family lawyer, whom Juss has volunteered to help the hapless Abby after something was found in Abby’s car, implicating her in a murder.

Bells On

Excerpt from BAR SINISTER
by Marian Allen

Out on the sidewalk, Juss regarded her attorney shrewdly. “I believe you know what it is, don’t you? What they found.”

He unlocked his car. “No, I do not.”

“You suspect.”

Delaney tugged at his hat brim and said, “Pitt thought it made him look like a with-it young powerhouse to keep his hair shoulder-length and pull it back with a–” he flickered fingers toward his nape, “–hair thing. He favored red. I’m thinking that’s Abby’s ‘rat with a red collar’.”

“You don’t think she did it, do you? I think no way.”

“I think no way, too. I think it was planted.”

“By the cop?”

Delaney was silent, looking thoughtful.

Juss, remembering the thin young man who had advised Abby to call for help, answered herself. “I think no way.”

The lawyer smiled. “I think no way, too.”

Juss smiled back, eyes glittering. “If Abby didn’t put it there, and the cop didn’t put it there, somebody else must have put it there. The killer.”

Delaney’s smile faded.

“That’s for the police– Juss! That’s for the police to discover. Don’t give me that look. Juss, I have to deal with the police. Don’t make it hard on me. Please.”

“I won’t.”

DW looked unconvinced. He worked his shoulders, a sure sign he was about to make a concession. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow after I get back from court.”

We’ll talk about it sooner than that. If you think I won’t be there tomorrow morning with bells on, you don’t know me very well.

“You’ll be there tomorrow morning with bells on, won’t you?”

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Somebody gets involved in something that’s none of their business.

MA

About

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but now live in the woods in southern Indiana. Though I only write fiction, I love to read non-fiction. The more I learn about this world, the more fantastic I see it is.

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