Read Online Dying Echo: A Grim Reaper Mystery (Grim Reaper Series) by Judy Clemens - Free Book Online

friends?”
    Ricky frowned. “Not really. There was one other waitress at the restaurant who was about her age, but she kind of drove Alicia crazy. Ali said she never shut up.”
    “Would this be Bailey?”
    “You know her?”
    “I stopped by The Slope before coming here. She was working. And very eager to talk.”
    “You can’t believe anything she says.”
    “Then I guess you are guilty.”
    “What?”
    “She’s one of the few people in this whole town, apparently, who thinks you’re innocent. She’s going to help me. So I wouldn’t go bad-mouthing her right now if I were you.”
    “She’s going to help you? But she always hated—” He stopped.
    “Hated Alicia?”
    “Look, I don’t think she killed her, okay? She just never thought…She always said…”
    “That you should be with her instead of Alicia? I know. She told me the same thing. It’s not exactly a secret.”
    “So if she wants to help it’s not because she wants to help Alicia.”
    “Does it matter?”
    “Of course it matters! She doesn’t care that Ali got killed. She just wants to use this to prove she was right. Or something.”
    “It doesn’t matter why she wants to help. We’ll take whatever help we can get.”
    “I don’t want her making Alicia look bad.”
    “Ricky.” Casey grabbed his hand. “You said it before. Alicia doesn’t care anymore. She’s gone. But I care. And you should. You don’t want to be in here the rest of your life for a murder you didn’t commit. Accused of killing the woman you loved. I mean, you did, right?”
    “Did what?”
    “Love her.”
    “Of course I did.”
    “And you didn’t kill her?”
    He yanked his hand away and stumbled from his chair, hanging onto the back. “I already told you—”
    “Then we’ll take Bailey’s help. Won’t we?”
    He thrust out his chin, but then his shoulders drooped again, and he sank back into the chair. “You’ll be careful what you believe?”
    “About Alicia? Or about you?”
    “About any of it.”
    She studied him. “So, what should I believe?”
    “The only thing that really matters is that she was a good person. She really was.”
    A good person who had lied to him about such a basic thing as her name, and hadn’t shared the slightest detail about her past except a list of multiple, gigantic states. Never a good sign.
    “So tell me why someone would kill her.”
    “It wasn’t her. I mean, it wasn’t because it was her. It was a random break-in. It had to be.”
    Don cleared his throat. “I really don’t think it was random, not from the way they—”
    Casey glared at him, and Don stopped talking before he said anything too upsetting.
    Ricky didn’t seem to have heard, anyway. “She didn’t have anything worth stealing. There was no secret stash of money—”
    “And you know this how?”
    “Because she wasn’t the kind of person to hoard cash, or even care about it. She wore hand-me-down clothes. She never ate out on her own, even at The Slope. She didn’t even have a computer, for God’s sake.”
    “Why would God want her to have a computer?” Death said.
    “She never bought things,” Ricky continued. “If I did take her out to eat, she might pay her part—because she’d insist, not because I didn’t want to—but she didn’t go shopping, or skiing, or anything. There was nothing in her apartment people would plan to take. It had to be totally by chance.”
    “Okay.” Casey drummed her fingers on the table. “So let’s say it was random. How did they find her? She lived in a basement apartment, underneath a nosey landlord, in a residential neighborhood that wasn’t exactly fancy, but wasn’t a slum. You said yourself there was nothing obvious worth stealing. So why her?”
    “I don’t know. They followed her, maybe. She always walked home from work, and she was always alone. It would have been close to dark if it was after work. They could have been waiting for someone like her. Someone they could