The Murder Coat is a serialised mystery featuring Evie Harroway, a second-hand shop owner with a knack for finding trouble (and trouble finding her).
If you’re new here, head over to the Chapter Index and start at Chapter 1.
O if you prefer, you can listen to me reading it in this very homemade audio version.
It was raining. Not the romantic kind, either.
Just that grey, sideways Wellington piss that made you question every life choice, including opening a vintage shop on a street that turned into a wind tunnel.
Riddiford Street in Newtown was the kind of main drag that never stopped moving. Two-storey shopfronts with peeling paint, apartments crammed above them, bus wires webbed across the sky like bad knitting. The electric buses hissed and hummed as they barrelled through, spraying gutter water onto anyone foolish enough to stand too close. Cafés steamed up their windows, dairies stacked with faded chip ads leaned into the southerly, and the footpaths were a constant shuffle of scrubs-clad hospital staff, students, and locals with too many shopping bags. Gritty, noisy, stubborn. Not pretty… but alive.
I’d barely wrestled my way into the shop and unclipped Horatio, when Bernadette barrelled through the door like the heroine of a very niche noir film. Her coat was soaked, her laptop case was flapping open, and her face had the wild-eyed look of someone who’d been up all night chasing digital ghosts.
I caught her eye, and — knowing Delores was already inside, halfway through alphabetising the scarf display by emotional tone — made a sharp throat-slash gesture. Subtle. Urgent.
Bernie caught on immediately, adjusted her face, and strode through the door with all the breezy charm of someone popping in for a casual visit and not about to drop a bomb on my morning.
“Āta mārie!” she said cheerily, shaking rain off her coat, because of course this was the exact moment she chose to slip into casual Te Reo like it was second nature. “Thought I’d pop in for a cuppa.”
Delores didn’t even glance up. “Of course you did. I’ve made Assam.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve gone off Earl Grey?”
“Too floral. Distracts from the energy of the wool blend display.”
Bernie gave me a side-glance that said kill me, then added, “Any chance that mustard wrap is still around?”
“It’s not a wrap,” Delores sniffed. “It’s a stole. Vintage Marimekko. I moved it to the moody autumn table.”
Visual chaos, in other words.
“Actually, Delores,” I cut in, “would you mind taking a look at the new pricing tags out the back? I need a second opinion on the font weight.”
Delores’s eyes lit up. “Font weight is everything.”
“Exactly,” I said, herding her toward the back.
Once she vanished behind the curtain, Bernie sprang into action.
She moved like she’d been waiting her whole life for this precise cue — already yanking her laptop from its bag, flipping it open with the grim focus of a woman about to bring down the government. She had that look again, like she’d been mainlining coffee and conspiracy forums since midnight.
I should’ve been irritated. Hell, I was irritated. But there was also this treacherous flicker of admiration. She might’ve been a total amateur, but Bernie threw herself into the hunt with such gusto it was like watching a bloodhound in sequins. Endlessly exasperating. And yet, in her own chaotic way, brilliant.
The bell over the front door jangled.
Frankie breezed in from the rain, a takeaway coffee clutched in one hand, hoodie half-zipped, hair plastered against her face. She looked around like she’d just been waiting for a dramatic entrance.
“Morning, detectives,” she said, grinning. “Hope you haven’t started without me.”
I blinked. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Bernadette didn’t even flinch. “I may have looped her in.”
“You’ve formed a fucking murder club?”
“Task force,” Frankie corrected, dumping herself on a stool. “I bring digital skills. She brings unhinged enthusiasm. You bring —”
“The mortal fear for my life you two seem intent on ignoring.” I muttered.
Bernie ignored me and hissed: “Evie, you are not ready for this.”
I half-laughed, half-groaned. “Am I ever?”
Delores’s voice floated from the back room. “These are sans serif!”
I turned the kettle on as cover. “Sacrilege, I know.”
She swept back out, brandishing a strip of tags like evidence. “We cannot put these on the floor. I’m going to Riddiford Stationery to have a proper set printed — twelve-point Garamond, sensible weight — and I’ll get heavier card while I’m there. The last batch was offensively flimsy.”
“Wouldn’t dream of using them,” I said.
“I’ll be back before lunch,” she warned, snapping up her umbrella. “After that, the decorative brooch display is getting the breathing room it deserves.”
“Can’t wait.”
The door jingled as she swept into the rain.
Frankie turned to Bernie, dark eyes alight. “You go first.”
Bernie’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “Okay. So. We were right. The woman in the picture with Delores is her twin.”
I blinked. “What?”
She spun the laptop toward me. “Birth certificate. Found it in the National Archives, digitised in a poorly secured PDF. Two girls born the same day. Parents listed: Harold and Edith Templeton. Names: Delores Morgan Templeton and Margot Morgan Templeton.”
My stomach dropped. Cold, cold, everything went cold.
“Morgan?” I said it too fast.
Bernie looked up, blissfully unaware of the utter terror that name evoked in me. “Yeah. Weird they both have the same middle name, right?”
I played along, nodded slowly, ignoring the way the back of my neck was prickling. Oh, Bernie, weird didn’t even begin to fucking cover it.
Delores and her twin had the same middle name, a name that turned my bowels to water… What the actual fuck? Did Thax know this? Did Lila?
Frankie leaned in, tapping her own laptop. “That’s where I come in. Check this out.”
It was a grainy scan of an old newspaper article.
FIRE AT WELLINGTON NIGHTCLUB CLAIMS ONE.
Underneath: a blurry photo of charred wreckage, smoke curling into the night like a warning.
I read aloud, my throat tightening. “Unidentified female patron found in the rubble. Fire officials believe the blaze started near the rear stairwell. Police are treating the death as non-suspicious.”
Frankie snorted. “Of course they are. Because a woman dying in a locked nightclub during a fire is obviously just bad luck.”
“Which club?” I asked, already bracing for it.
She clicked again. “The Sandra Club. 1987.”
I felt the cold creep further in. “That’s the one from the photo.”
Frankie’s grin sharpened. “And it gets worse. After the fire? Margot vanishes. No funeral, no follow-up, no death notice. Not even a tax record.”
I blinked. “Nothing?”
“Not a scrap. Meanwhile, Delores pops up everywhere you’d expect — elector roll, land ownership, property transfers, the stationery store. But Margot? It’s like someone scrubbed her out.”
“Or like someone wanted her gone,” I murmured.
Bernadette leaned in, eyes gleaming. “And here’s the real kicker — the original police report from the fire. Only three named witnesses. One of them was Delores Templeton.”
My mouth went dry.
“And the other?”
Frankie held the beat for dramatic effect, then: “Melanie Godfrey.”
I sat back in my chair, the dots connecting themselves whether I liked it or not. “Melanie and Delores were both there the night of the fire?”
“Yup. Interviewed. Neither said much. Melanie’s statement said she saw someone heading for the fire exit, smoke already coming through the stairwell. Delores was vague as hell.”
I exhaled slowly. “And now Melanie’s dead. And Margot disappeared.”
Bernadette nodded. “And there’s a good chance the unidentified body in the fire was Margot. Or someone made it look that way.”
We stared at the screen in silence.
The Sandra Club.
The fire.
Delores. Melanie.
Margot Morgan Templeton — vanished.
And, somewhere beneath it all, the lingering scent of rain on concrete, petrol... and blood.
Bernadette’s voice was soft, almost cautious. “Evie… did she ever hint? Even once? That she was there? That she had a sister?”
My jaw clenched. “She never said a word. Not about being a witness the night of the fire. Not about her fucking twin sister. None of it.”
Frankie whistled low under her breath, eyes wide. For once, she didn’t crack a joke.
We sat in silence, letting that settle.
Bernadette leaned forward. “You need to ask her, Evie.”
I didn’t answer.
She gave me a pointed look. “When are you going to confront her?”
Panic flared in my chest. “When I know what I’m walking into.”
“She lied to you.”
“She withheld,” I corrected.
“Same difference.”
I stood, pacing a little behind the counter, staring out at the street, the water pooling in the gutters. “That name? Morgan? It… means something.”
Her head tilted. “To you?”
I nodded slowly but didn’t elaborate. Not yet. Not until I was sure.
Bernadette didn’t press. She knew when to let silence do the work. Frankie just glanced between us, clearly dying to ask but smart enough to keep her mouth shut.
“I’m scared,” I admitted.
Bernie snorted softly. “Of Delores?”
“Of what she’s still not telling me.”
This one gave me the chills. Who the F is Morgan?
Exactly, who is Morgan? I'm guessing something to do with her ex husband, but what?