The Garret PI Mysteries

By Christopher A. Cameron

Short mysteries requiring deep scientific knowledge to unravel and solve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arthur W. Ritchie
• Release date: Jul 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370367597

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The Garret PI Mysteries

of Christopher A. Cameron

By Christopher A. Cameron

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2017 Smokey Mirror Press

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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The Case of the Kwitty Farms!

The Glittering Glen Caper!

The Lady Likes Lists!

The Gwinnett Caper!

Murder So Slow!

THE CASE OF THE KWITTY FARMS!

Three types of murder are almost impossible to solve: The random event with no suspect or motive; cases where there are too many suspects or motives; and the officially unsolved murder — situations where you know exactly who did it and why, but can’t get a prosecutor to indict because they’re afraid of where a grand jury investigation might lead. Such was The Case of The Kwitty Farms.

The Kwittys’ had farmed in the Midwest since the land rush of 1863 and would be there still if a series of accidents hadn’t befallen the family.

No one thought twice about Grandma Kwitty’s death. She was in her 80’s and just died. Even Uncle Billy’s falling off his tractor and being cut to ribbons by a disc harrow raised no suspicions. But then the Kwittys’ started falling in droves and one of the survivors decided it was time to call in professional help.

I was sitting in my office reading the paper when the phone rang.

Mr. Hugh Garrett, the private investigator?

The one and only, I said lighting my pipe.

My name is Jarad Kwitty and ah — I got your name from my lawyer. We think we might need a private investigator and he said you’re the best in the business.

Well, I replied re-lighting my pipe, that’s very nice of him, but why do you need an investigator?

Well, there’s something going on out at our family’s farm that’s got us all scared and — well, we know you’re mostly an insurance investigator, but — what would it take to get you to come out here and look into this for us?

He was right in a way. I’d never intended to specialize and fell into insurance work almost by accident. Anyway, nothing was going on and after a few questions my appetite was whetted and I took the case. The next day my plane landed in farm country and I was baffled from the start because all the usual motives for committing a crime were missing.

Money? There wasn’t any. Farmland was selling for peanuts and had been for years. Hidden assets like oil or minerals? Forget it. No exploration had been done within 100 miles of the Kwitty’s place and even those had found nothing. Inheritance was out. None of them had two nickels to rub together. I even wondered if the farm was in the path of a proposed highway or railroad but was told I was off by a century.

Revenge? People don’t murder wholesale for revenge. Or for the fun of it for that matter — unless they’re crazy and there wasn’t any hint of that either. It looked like a strange sequence of coincidences that just didn’t want to quit.

I’d been there less than a week when another one dropped — a grandson died of carbon monoxide poisoning. We traced it to a kerosene heater, but no matter how long or hard we looked at it, the best we could come up with was the kid had closed the damper and asphyxiated himself. We were sitting around talking about it when the phone rang — their cousin living on the next farm over had just been crushed by his horse.

While the family rushed to the hospital, I went next door to nose around. Most of the neighbors were there and ready to tell me all about it. Or rather, tell me what they thought about it.

Cousin Jake had been a widower who lived alone. He’d been in his barn when his horse seems to have slammed him against a wall and then trampled him. No one knew when it happened, or why, or how long he’d been laying there before they found him, so I headed back to the Kwittys where the phone was ringing: Cousin Jake had just died.

Another death — another cause — and still no motive. One thing bothered me though: no one ever seemed to be injured in this family. If they had an accident, they died. Information on such deaths would be in the coroner’s office so I called ahead for an appointment. He wasn’t doing much either and invited me to come right over, so after a short drive to town, I pulled up in front of the simple block building he called his place of business.

Michael Ross M.D. said the sign on his lawn, and he’s your typical boondocks coroner: Short on talent, long on ego and quick to mention how meager his salary was considering the time he’d spent on the Kwittys recently. He didn’t think it funny that the town had taken to calling him their family physician either. Anyway, as I entered his office I saw the files I’d asked for stacked on his desk.

Look, Mr. Garrett, he said with the practiced condescension of so many short, fat, balding professionals who suspect they’re failures, one heart attack — and with that he literally threw a folder at me! One sliced into fertilizer, another folder flew in my direction, three kids trying to move a bridge with their car, plop, plop, plop, they landed in my lap, kerosene heater, plop, "and the last one crushed by a horse! Sure it looks funny! But if this is murder whoever’s doing it is going to a hell of a lot of trouble to make it look natural! I mean, if this is murder, whoever’s doing it’s got