Member-only story
Middleburg
A short murder mystery from Virginia’s hunt country
The murder had been easy, surprisingly so. Adam whistled tunelessly as he puttered around the shop. He refilled the brass holder with business cards and straightened out the stack of “Visit Middleburg” brochures. Outside the antique shop, the light was starting to fail. The days were so short in November. They’d be short in Puerto Rico, too, but they’d also be warm. He hated the cold.
His mother had always said the best times were the unplanned ones. He chuckled. The best murders seemed to be the unplanned ones as well. “Crimes are always of opportunity” was the old saw. And it was true. One minute his wife was standing on the Metro platform, thrilled with the prospect of a Saturday browsing DC art galleries and the next minute she was dead on the tracks. The platform had been crowded; no one saw his little shove. Actually, now that he thought about it, it was an accident. He hadn’t meant to, but somehow it happened. Adam had only intended to touch her back and shepherd her in the right direction.
That was last winter. He’d played the grieving spouse to perfection. Only one of the investigators had ever looked at him with a tad of suspicion and that was…
