Read Online Disturbing the Dead by Sandra Parshall - Free Book Online Page A

you.” She almost smiled. “Your father was very good about calling me. Even after everybody else lost interest in trying to find my mother.”
    “You kept in touch with my father?”
    “He called me every few months, even if he didn’t have any news. The last time I heard from him was the week the court declared my mother legally dead. The same week he died.”
    Tom hadn’t known his father was talking to Pauline’s daughter regularly. But a cop staying in contact with a victim’s family wasn’t unusual while a case remained unsolved. Why did he feel so shaken by the thought? What did it matter?
    He stared down at his notebook, with its list of unanswered questions to follow up on. Without realizing he was doing it, he’d added one word to the end of the list: Dad?
    Chapter Seven

    Rachel rounded a curve and the Wild Mountain Rose Diner appeared through the rain and mist, an oblong wooden building crouched against a mountain. She hadn’t seen another structure for the last two miles. She approached uneasily, Tom’s words blaring in her head. Drug dealers, a possible killer—he’d made all of Rocky Branch District, and this little diner in particular, sound alien and dangerous.
    A strip of pavement in front served for parking. Trucks and cars had churned unplowed snow into filthy slush, and the rain that had started an hour before was washing the whole mess into a drainage ditch. Rachel pulled into one of the few remaining spots.
    Outside the diner’s door, a girl with long black hair huddled in the shelter of the overhanging roof. Rachel popped open her umbrella and jogged to the entrance. “Hi, are you Holly?”
    “I sure am. You Dr. Goddard?”
    “Yes. I’m sorry I’m late. I had an emergency.” The girl wore a shabby brown coat with faded jeans and sneakers, but she was gorgeous, a flower blooming in a trash heap. What a smile, and those cornflower blue eyes were astonishing with her dark hair and olive complexion. Rachel shook rain off her umbrella and folded it. “Why didn’t you wait inside? You must be freezing.”
    “Oh, I don’t mind.” Holly cast a nervous glance at the door.
    “Let’s get out of the rain.”
    “Well, uh, maybe we oughta talk out here. So nobody’ll interrupt us, you know?”
    Why had she asked Rachel to come here if she didn’t want to take her inside? Maybe, Rachel thought, she should get this over with right now, let the girl down as gently as she could. Then Holly shivered and wrapped her arms around her body.
    “You need to warm up,” Rachel said. “Come on.” She pushed the door open and walked in, leaving Holly no choice but to follow.
    The odor of over-spiced chili hit Rachel in the face and made her throat close up with nausea. A haze of cigarette smoke burned her eyes and nose, and “Take This Job and Shove It” roared out of the jukebox at a volume that made her ears ring.
    Aside from the fat middle-aged woman behind the counter—Rose?—Rachel and Holly were the only females in the place. Heads turned as they passed a dozen men on stools. One called out, “Hey, Holly, ain’t you gonna introduce us to your friend?”
    Holly kept her chin high and her eyes straight ahead. Rachel tried to ignore the men, but they set off a twinge of fear inside her. They’d been drinking a while, if the number of empty beer bottles on the counter was an indication.
    Holly and Rachel slid into a booth in the rear corner, next to the plate glass window. As they wriggled free of their coats, the jukebox nearly drowned out Holly’s whisper. “Those guys’re all out of work, and they don’t have nothin’ better to do than hang out here and pester people.”
    “They don’t bother me,” Rachel lied. With the edge of one hand, she brushed crumbs into a small pile on the tabletop, then shoved them toward a patch of dried catsup. The general reek and dirty feel of the place reminded her of a restaurant in Mexico where she and Luke had eaten. Mice had run across their