A Murder of Crones

by C.L. Cobb

About the Author: C.L. Cobb is a long-time author of adventure, humor and mystery stories. She started sending out stories – and collecting rejection slips – when she was twelve and continued until she sold her first story to Easyriders. She has subsequently sold stories to other magazines such as American Iron, Outlaw Biker, Woman’s World, and Mystery Weekly Magazine, and she has written nonfiction such as Crime Scene Chemistry for the Armchair Sleuth. Her characters and storylines come from her adventures as waitress.

Excerpt

Sometimes I hate being an old lady.

But not for the reasons you’d think.

Yes, I hate the aches and pains, the forgetfulness, and endless pills, but more than that I hate the dismissal. People think old ladies are helpless. They don’t think we’re capable of anything.

Certainly not capable of murder.

When I heard the creak of the ancient bed, I stretched my old bones and straightened my apron. I walked to the bay window to wait.

From my fourth-floor vista I could watch the parade of nannies with strollers and cellphone-chatting dogwalkers in front of the townhouse I called home. I couldn’t call it my house, because I was only a live-in caregiver, but I was on duty every hour of every day, so over time it had become my home.

The townhouse was a nineteenth-century brownstone with massive stairs leading to the second-floor entrance and a tiny terrace to the side. The whole was surrounded by a spear-headed iron fence, which gave the house a creepy Addams family feel, but I loved it.

And I loved Eulah, the old dear: the woman who was my charge.

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