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    ICE MAN and Other Cold Deaths: a Six-Pack of Mysteries
    ICE MAN and Other Cold Deaths: a Six-Pack of Mysteries
    ICE MAN and Other Cold Deaths: a Six-Pack of Mysteries
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    ICE MAN and Other Cold Deaths: a Six-Pack of Mysteries

    By Michael D. Britton

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    About this ebook

    From the slaying of a reality show celebrity judge, to a race against time to save a crucial memory, to a perplexing murder case in a lunar colony, these six short tales are a fun read for any lover of mysteries.

    Michael D. Britton has been writing professionally for 20 years, working in government, private industry, marketing, technical, web, freelance and a decade in the raw world of TV news.

    His short fiction has received multiple honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest, among other recognition; and his novels have advanced through multiple rounds of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in various years.

    A prolific lover of the written word, he has written more than a half dozen novels and over 60 short stories and novellas.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIntelligent Life Books
    Release dateJun 25, 2011
    ISBN9781465963734
    ICE MAN and Other Cold Deaths: a Six-Pack of Mysteries
    Author

    Michael D. Britton

    Michael D. Britton has been writing professionally for 25 years, including heading up marketing departments, working in huge private corporations, writing for government entities, supporting non-profit healthcare systems, sprinting with tiny tech start-ups, freelancing, and a producing TV news broadcasts in the 90s. His short fiction has received ten honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest, among other recognition; and his novels have advanced through multiple rounds of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in various years. His list of indie-published fiction titles exceeds 65 and keeps increasing. Learn more at www.michaeldbritton.com.

    Read more from Michael D. Britton

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      Book preview

      ICE MAN and Other Cold Deaths - Michael D. Britton

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Ice Man

      Quartet for Three

      Remember

      A Girl’s Best Friend

      Philatelist’s Gold

      Dead Dames Don’t Tell Tales

      ICE MAN

      And other Cold Deaths:

      A Six-Pack of Mysteries

      by

      Michael D. Britton

      * * * *

      © Copyright 2011 by Michael D. Britton / Intelligent Life Books

      Discover other titles by this author at michaeldbritton.com

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      ICE MAN

      The cold wetness awoke detective Grant Jenkins – the odd thought that he’d wet himself flashing through his semi-conscious mind.

      Nah – that’s ridiculous, a grown man wetting the bed?

      The bed. It seemed to envelop him like a thick cloud – soft and fluffy – and now moist. A storm brewing?

      He felt the smooth arm against his shoulder and realized the wetness must be something else.

      Last thing he remembered, he’d been talking to a diamond-studded, smokin’ hot brunette in a little black dress, within searing distance from the giant rock fireplace - he’d stood close enough to smell her musky perfume, ostensibly to hear her over the conversational din. He was busy impressing her with his gruesome stories from the homicide department.

      (Contrary to popular opinion, chicks dig morbid stuff. At least the gorgeous, semi-Goth winebibbing ones found at upscale Park City ski lodges.)

      Maybe the conversation had gone well.

      Maybe it had gone very well.

      Jenkins rolled under the cushy sheets and gently threw his arm over the woman next to him, struggling to remember her name before she woke up.

      He slowly lifted up on his other elbow to get a look at her face, hoping it would ring a bell.

      Oh. Platinum blonde. Don’t remember any blondes.

      Oh. This blonde’s not breathing.

      This one isn’t going to wake up.

      Jenkins scrambled out of bed buck naked, his bare feet sinking into the deep white pile, and pulled back the silky cream-colored covers to reveal an equally nude girl of about twenty five with soft yellow wavy hair, heavy makeup on her closed eyes, fire engine fingernails, and a deep stab wound in her chest.

      A puddle of water sat in the gory depression on the curved side of her left breast, thinning the blood and slowly dripping down over her pale side to accumulate on the soaked bed sheets.

      Not good.

      Jenkins looked around the luxurious room with its dark wood accents and large plasma TV. A pair of his-and-hers terry cloth robes were draped across the other queen bed, exactly as housekeeping had arranged them. He could smell alcohol in the air, but the only evidence was an unopened bottle of Champagne sitting in water in the ice bucket on the table near the fireplace. The flutes alongside were untouched.

      He spotted his clothes strewn over a dark gray velvet daybed by the large bay window. He stumbled into his boxers and pulled up his gray suit pants, slipped into a pair of black leather loafers, and threw open the heavy blackout curtains.

      Light burst in, the sun blasting off the snow outside in a blinding display and highlighting fine dust particles floating in the air inside the room. He looked around, the carpet now whiter than before, but couldn’t find his dress shirt anywhere.

      But his gray suit jacket was hanging neatly on the back of a paisley wingback chair, so he put it on and reached inside for his phone. He paced the floor while it rang three times on the other end - his mouth tasted like an ashtray.

      Yeah, this is Jenkins, his dry voice breaking the eerie silence of the room. I’ve found a body – it’s a homicide. Yes, I’m certain this was murder, boss – I’m no coroner but it sure wasn’t a heart attack. Yeah, send the meat wagon to, uh, I’m not sure where I am, hold on.

      Jenkins walked back to the disheveled bed, looked on the little glass-topped night stand and found a narrow, pale yellow hotel pad with a hotel logo header, then opened the room’s rich mahogany door and looked at the brass numbers on the other side.

      Stone Essiman Lodge, room 99. And come quick, I think the evidence is melting.

      #

      No, no, no, boss, that’s not how it happened at all.

      Jenkins could hear his own voice as he sat in the interrogation room, bright fluorescents overhead, a big mirrored wall on one side that needed to be cleaned, tiny white security camera in the corner above the door like an evil eye, three bare white walls and a gunmetal metal table with two worn wooden chairs.

      He sounded like the last three hundred suspects he’d interviewed himself – guilty as sin.

      Let’s go through this one more time, Jenkins, said Hugh Nourse, Jenkins’ grudging supervisor and all-round miserable puck. You say you were talking to a brunette, whose name you can’t remember, then wound up in bed with a blonde, but don’t remember how, and you claim to have no knowledge whatsoever of the two hundred thousand dollars that the deceased Laura Lamond had transferred into your account yesterday morning – hours before you’d even met her?

      No. You’re not listening. I. Never. Met. Her. Get it? Not before the money mysteriously appeared in my account, not after, and not even when she was in bed with me, ‘cause she was dead, see?

      Jenkins fingered his cigarette and watched the smoke spiral up past Nourse’s scowling bulldog face, glad that the non-smoking Nazis hadn’t extended their fascist reach into the interrogation room. Yet. The fact that doling out little pleasures like cigarettes was useful in getting idiots to talk seemed just enough to keep the clean-air people at bay for now.

      Chief Nourse was constantly perspiring, and Jenkins thought he could feel the heat radiating off the man’s rotund body from across the table.

      "Look, I know you don’t approve of my ways, boss. I dunno, maybe you’re even a little jealous at all the action I get. Whatever. But

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