crissakes," I heard myself say. "I'm on vacation, dammit!"



53
"Well, isn't this just peachy," I said, finally stripping off the clothes that had become steadily more uncomfortable during our police interviews. "Why couldn't I have chosen somewhere else?"
As the people who found the deceased—apparently the very recently deceased—Jerry Mansfield, the police had not only needed to talk to us, but to issue the standard request to remain in the area.
Syl managed a sympathetic smile, though she couldn't have been feeling any more comfortable—probably less. "Jase, darling, I think we have to face the fact; it's your karma. You attract these kind of things. If we went somewhere else, that's where we'd find the trouble. Even before you met up with Verne, the