Read Online Dead Ends (Main Street Mysteries Book 2) by Sandra Balzo - Free Book Online Page A

been friends since kindergarten and first grade respectively, but he was the only one she'd confided in about Ben.
    Granted, the revelation had been inadvertent and accompanied by an epic and uncharacteristic torrent of tears – hers, not his – but it felt good, nonetheless, to tell someone.
    Not that she planned to tell anyone else, especially Chuck, given the circumstances.
    ‘Your car is totaled?’ he asked, lacing his hands behind his head and leaning back in the chair to stretch. Chuck's green eyes always looked a little dreamy – Mama insisted on calling them ‘bedroom’ eyes – but now the chief looked downright tired, the result of a long night which, according to Chuck, had culminated in the positive identification of Tanja Rosewood as the driver of the Porsche.
    ‘And how. The mechanic who answered the phone at the garage said: ”Well, ma'am, we can fix it, but this is the one time the whole will not be greater than the sum of its parts. In fact, I'm not sure we can even find all the parts.”’
    ‘That would have been Earl.’ The chief took a swig of his Diet Coke. ‘The man does have a silver tongue to go along with his eagle eyes.’
    ‘He's the one who spotted the car yesterday.’ Her own Diet Coke, untouched, was sitting on the desk.
    ‘Yup. And good thing. There were no signs at the spot the car went off the road and it wasn't the first.’
    ‘There's more than one car down there?’ AnnaLise was feeling very lucky all of a sudden.
    ‘At least two, though the one's slipped deeper into the gorge, so we'll need some time and equipment to recover it. Could be just a stolen car someone was trying to get rid of, or maybe the poor folks did go over like Mrs Rosewood. If Earl Lawling hadn't spotted the yellow of that car before the leaves and eventual snow covered it and the spring thaw sent water into that gorge, God knows when we'd have found it.’
    ‘I assume Mrs Rosewood died on impact?’ From the horror AnnaLise had experienced just being close to the edge, she couldn't even fathom what it would feel like to be hurtling over it.
    ‘It's a long way down and, despite the law, Mrs Rosewood wasn't wearing a seat belt.’
    ‘They wrinkled her clothes,’ AnnaLise said reflexively.
    Too late, she saw Chuck's sleepy eyes sharpen, like they'd just hopped out of bed and strapped on a six-shooter. ‘And just how would you know that?’
    AnnaLise felt her face get warm. ‘I'm sorry, I thought you knew. Ben is the district attorney for the county I work in.’
    ‘“Ben” being Mr Rosewood?’
    There she went, digging herself in deeper. The less said the better. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, Mr Rosewood certainly made it clear he's a DA there in Wisconsin, but he didn't mention you two were acquaintances. You know the family quite well then?’
    Maybe Chuck should have been a district attorney, though interrogational skills certainly came in handy in police work, too, as witnessed by . . . well, right now.
    ‘The family? No,’ AnnaLise said, following her own mental advice to keep it short, stupid. ‘We were introduced just yesterday at Mama's.’
    ‘Which is when Mrs Rosewood volunteered the information that she hated seat belts?’
    What was Chuck doing? Auditioning for a position with the prosecution? ‘No,’ AnnaLise screwed up her face, like she was thinking. Which she was, fast and furious. ‘I'm not sure how . . . oh, I know, it must have been my friend, Katie, who mentioned it. She works in the DA's office and, well,’ a smile, ‘you know how girls talk.’
    Katie, AnnaLise's own mother and every woman who supported the equal rights amendment would shoot her. Should shoot her.
    ‘Huh,’ was all Chuck said.
    ‘Anyway, that's pretty much all I know.’ AnnaLise shrugged. ‘Besides the fact that Suzanne Rosewood just started at U-Mo and . . . oh, you do know that Tanja had a spa appointment up at what used to be Tail Too, right?’
    ‘The Sutherton Spa? Yes.’
    A rise by any other