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Darling Corey's Dead
by Anne Wingate
Category: Mystery/Crime/Suspense/Thriller
Description: Set in the Caddo Lake area of Deep East Texas, this novel unfolds as Detective Cheryl Burroughs and Postal Inspector Allen Conyers work together to find a robber, forger, and murderer before he has time to kill again. Inspector-in-Charge Jim McCain, from the Postal Inspection Office in Fort Worth, is ready to fight anybody who disagrees with him, while he goes out of his way to be as disagreeable as possible to everybody else. "I based the character of Darling Corey on two prostitutes I knew when I was policing," the author says. "I liked one of them; the other--who twice got away with murder--was at the top of my list of people I would like to be called out at two A.M. to work the murder of."
eBook Publisher: Live Oak House, 1984
eBookwise Release Date: January 2005
 
14 Reader Ratings:
Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [275 KB]
Words: 64942
Reading time: 185-259 min.
" A well-plotted, suspenseful, thoroughly satisfying mystery, ... peopled with interesting characters ... the author resists the temptation to present characters who, except for the detective group, are either unpleasant or foolish or both. No one is seen as completely evil."--Drood
"She rounds out her characters nicely, treating emotions and conflict smoothly. Under which rock may a multiple killer be found who takes particular pleasure in robbing post offices and shooting postal inspectors?"--Allen J. Hubin, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
The first shot rang out seconds after they had slammed the car door, startling them both with its utter unexpectedness and shattering the windshield between them. Cheryl, on the street side of the blue Ford, dropped down behind it onto the dirt shoulder, almost even with the front of the back door. She reached for the short-barreled .38 in the shoulder holster under her shirt-jacket as Allen Conyers, with one shocked glance at the house, rolled across the hood of the car to join her. He had his service revolver out by the time he landed beside her.
"Where'd it come from?" Allen shouted, rather too close to Cheryl's ear for comfortable shouting.
"I don't know," Cheryl answered, moving away from him. "Up there somewhere."
"Up there somewhere" covered a lot of territory. The old three-story Victorian mansion had been converted into apartments thirty years before, and they must have been slum apartments for most of those years, but all the same, there were twenty-four windows overlooking the bare dirt yard.
There hadn't been another shot yet to tell them where the sniper was.
"What the hell?" Allen said, more quietly. "All I wanted to do was talk with her, for crying out loud."
"That's not going to be her doing the shooting," Cheryl answered.
"No?" Allen asked dubiously. "You already told me she'd gotten away with killing two people."
"But they were both on account of drug rip-offs," Cheryl answered. "She doesn't shoot at cops. At least, she hasn't before. Well, not unless she's really drunk, and she doesn't get drunk this time of day. I don't have any extra ammo," she added. "Do you?"
"Yeah, but it's in the glove box, and I don't know if I can get to it." He glanced again, apprehensively, at the house.
"I'm shorter than you. I can get it if you'll give me the car key."
"If I haven't dropped it--" He didn't argue about safety; he just handed over the key. The instant she reached for it a second shot rang out, ricocheting off the hood of the car and lodging in a live oak tree in the yard. They both fired back, but too late; the gunman had stepped back again into the darkened room behind the window.
But at least they knew, now, which window.
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