When I plunged it into the ice, it resulted in some deeply satisfying cracks. There was great heft in its hardwood handle, and the blade had been keenly sharpened at the family-owned corner hardware store by a guy named Vern. It was a vintage tool, pilfered from Jacob’s familial shed in a Northern state where winter is not to be taken lightly. The ice chopper in my arsenal was a hefty piece of equipment. I didn’t actually mind working off steam with a good, old-fashioned snow shovel.īut then the weather went and pulled crap like this…. Who knew what sorts of surveillance devices they might plant? And there was no garage where I could keep a snowblower. I wasn’t keen on hiring strangers to poke around our property. But in our home, dealing with the walkway fell to me. They owned snowblowers, and they had no compunctions about using them at 4 AM-either that, or they employed someone else to come make excessive amounts of snow-removal noise. Most of our neighbors were phenomenally house proud. And thanks to her refusal to dredge up ancient history, I was no closer to getting my hands on my permanent record. Laura Kim was neck-deep in a job search for a new assistant-one who didn’t moonlight killing people. Jacob was working all kinds of crazy hours trying to make sure there weren’t any other double-agents at the water cooler. Everyone took it personally that they’d been duped by his self-effacing act. The Midwest branch of the FPMP was still reeling from Patrick Barley’s stint as Laura’s assistant. Usually one after the other in rapid succession, so you never knew which jacket to wear to work or where to keep your ChapStick.

It was the beginning of February, and in Chicago, that could mean anything from arctic conditions to a balmy thaw.

And the vocabulary wasn’t the only thing that was slippery.

I don’t take pride in many things-maybe that’s why the definition of the word feels slippery in my mind. Who’s to say if it was pride or stubbornness that kept me going? At the moment, gazing over the expanse of our front sidewalk, I wasn’t quite sure which one I was running on. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.įor Andrea, who knows this series even better than I do.Ĭombine heavy snow, a startling thaw, and a precipitous deep freeze.Ī slick sheet of ice, thicker than my skull and twice as hard. Murder House: Ps圜op 10 © 2019 Jordan Castillo Price.

GhosTV by Jordan Castillo Price