The Mixed Up Murders

Collingsworth had driven slowly home. He sure didn’t want to get pulled over by a cop for speeding. Not tonight of all nights. He drove down the alley and backed into the shed behind the Plum sisters’ boarding house. There was plenty of room for the snowmobile trailer in there. He unhooked the trailer, closed the shed door and pulled his car into his assigned parking place. He climbed out of the car taking the souvenir he had removed from Debby DeYoung’s body and the box containing the size 17 shoes. As he slowly climbed the stairs to his room, he carefully avoided step number five on the staircase. No sense in waking his landladies by stepping on a squeaky stair. He just slipped through the doorway into his room when a door farther down the hall opened and one of the other boarders headed for the bathroom. “Whew! Made it undetected,” he thought. “But, boy, that was close.” So far he had avoided any face-to-face meetings with the other tenet. He’d just had fleeting glimpses of his back as he closed the door to his room or as he went down the stairs toward the front door on his way out.Collingsworth headed to the closet, pulled the cord to turn on the light, and pushed aside the board covering the opening to the attic in the closet ceiling.
He carefully laid his packages on the attic floor and replaced the board over the opening. He breathed a sigh of relief. He changed into his sweat pants and tee shirt for bed, sat down at the desk, and began peeling the super glue off his fingertips dropping the long strips of dried glue on a Kleenex that he had spread on the desktop. “One down. How many more before mother finally notices me?” he wondered.