Epilogue

 

Diane's words kept ringing in my ears. “You're off duty when you're staying with us. That means you don't have to get up in the night to play cop around here.”

Yeah! Right! I guess I can't blame my sister for getting it wrong this once. She didn't know she had a murderer living in her attic. How often does that happen?

One night when Jacob Longfellow prowled around the neighborhood, thinking about breaking and entering to steal what he could carry off, he noticed the attic door open that Paul hadn't fixed. He climbed on the deck and stood on the table to hoist himself into the attic.

Seemed like a good enough place to hide out rent free. He hadn't thought about the fact that Paul would eventually put a door over the attic opening and lock it.

Not that the locked door was much of a problem when there was the attic opening in the smaller bedroom. He made himself at home on the main floor when Diane was out of the house and at night after we went to bed.

He ate what he wanted, used the bathroom and even showered. By reusing the dirty towels already used by Paul and Diane, they never knew the difference.

When he wanted to leave the house in the night, the man unlocked the front door and went on his excursions. He made sure to get back into the house before daylight so he'd be hid in the attic.

If the owner of the turkey confinement buildings hadn't came in on Longfellow in his office, he probably wouldn't be dead now. Longfellow only meant to rob what cash he could find in the office, but he didn't want to be caught so he bashed Rudd's head in.

Longfellow had used Diane's kitchen flashlight for his walk out in the country to the turkey confinement buildings. He got careless and forgot to turn the flashlight off as he passed my window on the way to the front door.

I didn't have a chance to see what I thought was a peeking Tom, occupied like I was with the venetian blind. How he managed to slip passed our bedrooms unnoticed that night I'll never understand.

I guess Longfellow could hear our conversations well enough to know he'd have to get out of the attic by the weekend. He knew once Paul found all the evidence of his staying there that he wouldn't be able to come back.

The night I followed Longfellow to the bedroom he was flat on the floor, hiding between the bed and the dresser when I checked the room. After I went back to bed, it was his bad luck that he hurried to get through the attic opening and kicked the picture off the wall.

The next time in his scramble to get hid, he let insulation spill out on the dresser. If we hadn't found Jacob Longfellow when we did, he'd have been gone by the time Paul went bat hunting on the weekend.

 

About The Author

 

Fay Risner lives with her husband on a central Iowa acreage along with their chickens, rabbits, goats and cats. A former Certified Nurse Aide at the Keystone Nursing Care Center in Keystone, Iowa, she now divides her time between writing books, working in her flower beds and the garden and going fishing with her husband in their boat.

Fay writes books in various genre –a historical mystery series, a western series, an Amish series set in southern Iowa and two books for Caregivers about Alzheimer's. She uses 12 font print in her paperback books and 14 font print in her novellas to make them reader friendly.

Her books have a mid western Iowa and small town flavor. She pulls the readers into her stories, making it hard for them to put a book down until the readers sees how the story ends. Readers say the characters are fun to get to know and often humorous enough to cause the readers to laugh out loud. The books leave the readers wanting a sequel or a series so they can read about the characters again.