Murder In Twin Bluffs Harbour: Zak Vancura Mysteries, #1

By Donald Roberts and Donald Harry Roberts

Coffee. In this business you need lots of it because it keeps you going when you are burning the candle at both ends, which is just about all the time and you gotta have a callused heart and an iron soul, because if you don't have these sometimes the stories you write for a small town newspaper like The Twin Buffs Harbour Mirror will shred you like so much unwanted documents and spit you out like a mouth full of bad meat.

When I enlarged the new photo, I saw a new shadow and with a little pix enhancing recognized something that made my blood run cold. Not only was Alasyn Murton dead, it was no accident. I started getting my headline story ready for January tenth, A Murder In Twin Bluffs Harbour.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donald Roberts
• Release date: Jul 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393446941

Donald Roberts

Just an old yarn spinner

Book preview

Chapter One

Coffee. In this business you need lots of it because it keeps you going when you are burning the candle at both ends, which is just about all the time and you gotta have a callused heart and an iron soul, because if you don’t have these sometimes the stories you write for a small town newspaper like The Twin Buffs Harbour Mirror will shred you like so much unwanted documents and spit you out like a mouth full of bad meat.

But no matter how tough you get there is always one that comes along, grabs you by whatever part of your mind turns you inside out with awe and grief and dumps what’s left in the psycho trash.

Sometimes you don’t figure out where a mystery actually begins until its solved, or nearly solved and when you do, it all seems so simple, but until that moment of eureka it ties the neurons in your brain into a massive Gordian knot and if you’re like this reporter you can’t let it go until you find that elusive loose end that unravels the whole ugly mess. When the first shard of the mystery surfaces, like an iceberg all you see is the surface. When that shard rises out of the twisted fibres of intrigue in the form of a body in the cold dark water of Twin Bluffs Harbour the veil of innocents suddenly flares in a fire ball of suspicion.

It was that grandeur occasion of New-Year’s Eve. I think everyone in town, old enough to be out for such a gala event had arrived, with a few trickling in who had been celebrating the night at private functions, probably drawn by the loud music emanating from the stage built especially for the extravaganza at right angles to the harbour front pavilion which houses the Squirrels Den Bistro, re-opened for the night serving a variety of finger foods and hot drinks. The theme of the night was music popular during the Big Band Era, though there was some aimed at the younger folk, generally considered ear shattering hoopla. A beer tent was set up in the tennis courts along Water Street.

In the grassy area, currently packed under a foot of snow were food vendors selling everything from hot dogs to pulled pork as well as sweets and hot apple cider. And of course, people were everywhere. No one seemed to be bothered with the cold and the good cheer was volcanic.

No one really notices Zak Vancura wandering around with his camera. He’s always there at events snapping pictures, asking questions now and then collecting information for this article and that for his newspaper, The Twin Bluffs Harbour Mirror. I pick up a lot of conversations that people would rather not be overheard, but most of it gets tucked away in the memory archives, mostly of which eventually gets permanently deleted. But sometimes I dig them up when something reaches out to my curiosity.

I would have forgotten the argument between Sy Thanford and Collin Wakens, and the shadowy tryst of Llewellyn Thanford and Weldon Markly, and a few other not so cheerful conversation that often occur when the world is celebrating such events with champagne and other libations tucked away in secret pockets. I chuckled at the antics at the time but...

I went about, almost dashing in fact, trying to capture as much of the night as possible, snapping pictures and getting people to chat a