Read Online Death in the Cards by Sharon Short - Free Book Online Page A

bikini in public.”
    I pressed my eyes shut. Oh crap. That was Cherry’s spin on my previous lie about the dream. I’d said navy one-piece. She’d said orange bikini. And in any case, apparently I couldn’t bring myself to open up to Owen.
    He was silent for a long moment. “I think you’d look great in an orange bikini, Josie,” he said softly.
    It was a compliment, and yet there was something sad in his voice—as if he knew, somehow—thanks to his own highly tuned subconscious ability to notice and interpret subtle clues in my mannerisms and tone of voice—that I wasn’t telling the truth.
    Our mood, thankfully, lightened once we were inside the corn maze.
    The maze was cut out of an acre of corn, then divided into nine sections, each section marked by plastic ribbon of a different color or design (hot pink, white with blue polka dots, bright green, and so on). At the start of the maze, you got a piece of paper, with a key at the bottom (for example, hot pink equals section one) and a large three-by-three grid, which would form the base of the maze map. In each section was a mailbox, which contained that section’s “map” and rolls of tape. The idea was to tape that section’s map onto the correct spot of the grid. Eventually, you’d have an entire map of the corn maze—the “reward” for the challenge.
    One of the tricks to navigating a corn maze—or, I reckon,any maze, although I’ve never been in a non-corn maze—is to stick to only left-hand or right-hand turns. We’d right-hand-turned our way past a witch, a goblin, a princess, a ghost, and a Dracula, who was really Lenny Longman. He was one of the stars of the East Mason County High School basketball team and the dreamboat of the Paradise Methodist Church youth group.
    Lenny had on an old basketball jersey that had been muddied and cut with slits, rubber bloody fangs, streaks of dirt on his face, and twigs and leaves sticking out of his hair, to signify his rising from his burial site. He was also wearing a huge grin, mostly because several members of the basketball cheerleading squad kept getting “lost” over and over in his section. It didn’t seem to frustrate them, though. They giggled every time they walked past Lenny, who made a big show of lunging at them.
    We’d just gotten our second-to-last map piece from Lenny and were in the next section. For the moment, we had this corner of the maze to ourselves.
    Owen widened his eyes and wiggled his fingers at me. “I vant to suck your blood,” he said in a bad Dracula imitation, “so you can be my cheerleader forever!”
    I giggled, and pounded at him as he pulled me to him and then started to dip me. “You know I never made the squad!”
    â€œBut you have such delightful pom-poms, my darling . . .”
    My next wave of giggles was thwarted by his kiss. Not bloodsucking, thankfully, but definitely blood-heating . . . until we heard the proverbial bloodcurdling shriek.
    But it wasn’t playful, or coming from Lenny’s quadrant. It was coming from outside the maze. And was followed by the words, “Get off of our property! Or we’re callin’ the police!”
    Owen and I stood up quickly. I shone my flashlight on the map. “We’re here,” I said, pointing to the northwest corner of the maze on the map, “and the hollering’s coming from rightabout here—which is right by the road.” I grabbed Owen’s arm. “Come on. Let’s see what’s going on.”
    â€œWe don’t know our way out of the maze yet,” Owen said. “Whatever’s going on will be over by the time we get there.”
    â€œShort cut,” I said, folding up the maze map and stuffing it into my purse. Then I turned my flashlight to a break in the back wall of corn. It was bad corn-maze etiquette, but someone had obviously gotten