Cheating Hearts & Cigarettes

By Michael David Matula

A frantic phone call, a suspected cheater, a pretty face and a missing body part. Chain-smoking David Granger and his no-nonsense partner Dorothy, a pair of unconventional private detectives from the deep south, attempt to prove their client innocent in a race against time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael David Matula
• Release date: Apr 11, 2014

Book preview

Cheating Hearts and Cigarettes

by Michael David Matula

Copyright 2014 Michael David Matula

Smashwords Edition.

Other Titles Available by the Author:

Try Not to Burn, a novel published by Post Mortem Press

Short Story Anthologies Featuring the Author:

Wrapped in Red from Sekhmet Press

Wrapped in White from Sekhmet Press

NovoPulp 2013/2014 Anthology from Hermit Studio

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You gotta do something, Traci Hallory cried into the phone, her voice raw with desperation and trembling with what sounded a whole lot like fear. You gotta find out who did this, David. Please. I don’t know who else to turn to right now. It wasn’t me, okay? It wasn’t me…

Three heavy breaths followed. The phone went silent.

***

Never seen anything like it before, David Granger muttered, fixing his face into a grimace as he studied the mess on the ceramic tile floor. Ashes dripped off the end of his long forgotten cigarette, splashing onto the canvas of his sneakers.

You need to get out more, then.

Granger grunted, his eyes straying toward the stern-faced blonde standing with her arms crossed to his left, not far from the refrigerator. Fitting. Dorothy always did possess all the warmth and empathy of a broken heater. If he told her he'd stubbed his toe, she'd offer to punch him in the nose. Least then he'd stop complaining about his toe, she'd say.

I get out plenty, Dot, he said. It's not gettin' out that's the problem. It's the goin’ inside. He nodded toward the mess. Stuff like this only happens behind closed doors. When people think they're safe from pryin' eyes.

Dorothy offered him the most meager of shrugs, then knelt down by the body splayed out across the kitchen floor. "That’s marriage for you. For better or