STORY SHOWCASE #23

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THE HIT

by Debby Raynor

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A little taster…

“I think I may have accidentally hired a hitman to kill the vicar.”

Cally spat her coffee across her mother’s white linen tablecloth. She tried to control her laughter but tears of mirth – and tears from choking on coffee – rolled down her cheeks as she gasped for air.

“I’m not joking,” said her mother indignantly as Cally blew her nose, wiped her eyes and tried to stop laughing.

“You can’t possibly expect me to believe that you’re in cahoots with a hitman to assassinate the local clergy,” she spluttered.

“I am perfectly capable of organising things,” said Jules. “You always underestimate me.”

Jules was approaching sixty years old, with wild curly hair, twisted on top of her head and secured with a broken pencil. Her name was Juliette, but she answered only to Jules, even from her daughter. Eccentric was the word most people would use to describe her.

Cally smiled at her mother. “Jules,” she said, “I would not dare to underestimate you. Now start from the beginning and tell me exactly what you think you’ve done.”

“Well,” said Jules, “You remember the Reverend Jacobs. Now there was a delightful man – couldn’t be more helpful, loved my arrangements of wildflowers, had a very interesting background. He had been at St. Hilda’s for as long as anyone could remember and—”

“Jules, the beginning of this latest catastrophe, not the beginning of time.”

About the author

Debby Raynor (commonly known as Debs) is a wife, mother and grandmother who relocated from the Home Counties of England to the city of Nottingham seven years ago. A former journalist and newspaper subeditor and editor who took voluntary redundancy during the 2020 pandemic, she now spends most of her time in a “Book Shack” in her back garden, reading, writing and creating YouTube videos for her book channel Raynor Reads Stuff.

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