The Bourbon Street Ripper (Sins of the Father, Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

frame was slender, with only her hips having any definition.
    Many people had told Samantha Castille that she had that “hometown girl” look. She couldn’t care less. People weren’t something Sam was interested in.
    After staring at her reflection for a few moments, Sam flipped open the bottle of aspirin with her thumb and popped a few pills right into her mouth. She stared again at her reflection before leaning forward to check under her eyes to see if the bags were as heavy as they had been the night before. They were. By the time the bitter taste of the pills dissolving in her mouth registered, Sam was already washing it down with a mouthful of cold coffee.
    The vile combination of tastes made Sam’s face crunch up into a comical pucker. The surge of bitterness passed within a few moments, and she swallowed the wretched mouthful and shuddered in disgust.
    Leaving the opened pill bottle on the sink, she took her coffee mug, which was marked with the phrase, “If I gave a penny for your thoughts, I’d have change coming,” and headed downstairs to her study.
    Outside, the patter of raindrops softly rolled off the slated roof and down to the gutter below, sloshing out to the sidewalk of Uptown New Orleans.
    It had been storming earlier, and Sam, after trying with all her might, had abandoned all pretense of trying to work and had contented herself with sitting outside on her back porch, holding a mug of cooling black coffee, listening to the torrents of rain, and thinking of as little as was humanly possible. Only when the rain had finally dwindled to a mere patter had Sam realized she had a splitting headache, and that she had daydreamed away two hours.
    “Isn’t that just lovely,” Sam had said to herself before unfolding her legs, sliding her feet into her slippers, and walking back inside the house in search of some aspirin.
    But now with the rain having lessened up, Sam returned to her study and the large solid oak desk that acted as a centerpiece to the room, taking a seat in a large red velvet chair. The desk, the chair, the house she lived in, and most of her belongings were keepsakes from her father.
    Even the lonesome and frightfully old-looking typewriter resting on the desk was once used by her father. Sam’s fingers lingered on the sides of the typewriter, lost in nostalgia for a moment’s passing, before she ritualistically slid her fingers over the keys of the typewriter and began to type.
     
        
Mortimer crept down the abandoned hallway, the creaking of the floorboards piercing the night’s silence like a terrified caterwaul. The investigator’s right hand stayed firmly wrapped around the butt of his trusty revolver, his left hand wrapped protectively around the flashlight that illuminated the path before him.

Beads of sweat gathered on his brow as his eyes darted side to side, suspicious of every shadow. Soon Mortimer came upon the last door in the hallway. He took a deep breath. The answers to the Mystery of the Crimson Mask lay inside! Hands shaking, the investigator reluctantly forsook his gun and, with an audible gulp, opened the door, revealing…
        
     
    Sam stopped typing in midsentence, her lips scrunching up into a pucker and shifting to the side. “Right,” she said and moved from the typewriter to a pile of handwritten notes. There were scribbles, mind-maps, jots, and musings—all the notes of a mystery writer—and Sam shuffled through them several times before finally letting out a deep sigh. Her fingers slid from the loose-leaf papers and ceremoniously slid back to the typewriter. For a long moment, she just sat there, fingers on the keys, not typing anything.
    After a few soft breaths, Sam’s face crinkled in frustration and anger, and she quickly typed out:
     
        
…nothing at all. Why? Because Sam is a dumb bitch who wrote herself into a corner six pages ago and has no feasible way for the Crimson Mask to be in this room. It’s