Read Online Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels by Mindy Starns Clark - Free Book Online

clean for him once his mama was gone.”
    “That’s a shame.”
    “Then he finally sold his mama’s house and took off. That’s when Shayna moved in over there.”
    I nodded, glancing again at the dismal apartment house up the street.
    “Did I hear someone say she was dating again?” I asked softly.
    “Here and there. ’Til Eddie Ray showed back up, she was mostly going out with Hank,” she whispered, gesturing toward the big man with the scar on his chin. “Kinda new here, but he seems like a good fella.”
    “How did he feel about Eddie Ray moving in with Shayna?”
    “You’d have to ask him,” she replied. “From what I heard, he backed right off and left ’em alone.”
    We were interrupted by another police car coming down the street, lights flashing but without the siren. I turned my face away and stepped back over to the crowd, just in case it was Barbara Hightower or one of the other cops I had dealt with earlier.
    “I heard his head was nearly chopped clean off,” said a woman. “Must’ve did it with an axe or something.”
    “I heard there was blood all over the inside of the trunk,” Mrs. Lentil said, tugging at my arm. “Is that true?”
    “There was a substantial amount of blood,” I admitted.
    “Must’ve been quite a bit,” an old man said. “There’s a big pool of blood on the ground in front of the house. Looks like an oil drip, but it’s Eddie Ray’s blood from where it was oozing out of the trunk.”
    That earned some groans from the crowd.
    “Drips all the way down here,” the man continued, pointing at the road. I looked to where he indicated and could see a black dot in the dirt. I stepped closer to study it, and then I looked forward to see another dot about ten feet away.
    “How far does this go?” I asked, looking off toward the dark end of the road, away from the police activity.
    “Don’t know,” the man said. “At least as far as my house at the end of the block there. I noticed it this morning when I was walkin’ over here to get a paper. I thought, ‘Uh-oh, somebody’s got themselves a bad oil leak.’ Then from a distance, I could seethe puddle under Shayna’s car. I didn’t realize it was at the back, not the front. Thought it was oil.”
    “About what time was this?” I asked the old man. He was stooped and weathered but had a thick, snow white head of hair and a twinkle in his eye.
    “Oh, ’bout six-thirty this morning. I considered knocking on Shayna’s door to tell her about the leak, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate being woke up that early. Not everybody keeps waterman hours.”
    I nodded, thinking. When the detectives had interviewed Shayna earlier, she told them that her car had sat here from about 8:00 last night until she came into Osprey Cove for her appointment with me at 3:30 this afternoon. But if Eddie Ray had been in the bar last night, drinking beer and playing pool, and these drops had been here at 6:30 this morning, then Shayna was wrong. Her car had been driven during the night, with Eddie Ray in the trunk, his blood leaving a telltale trail behind.
    “Did anybody see anything suspicious here last night?” I asked. “Or hear anything?”
    They mumbled “no’s” and shook their heads.
    “How about the car?” I persisted. “Anybody notice the car coming or going after eight o’clock last night?”
    Again, the answer was negative.
    I knew that soon the police would come over here and begin asking these very same questions. Suddenly, I realized what I needed to do.
    “I’ve got to run,” I told Mrs. Lentil. We said our goodbyes, and then I slipped quietly away and got back in my car. I drove away from the flashing lights, went about two blocks, and then turned and parked on a side street. I got out and went to the rear of the vehicle.
    I opened the hatchback softly, using a flashlight to look through my investigating tools for the item I needed now, a small handheld unit about the size of a soda can. It wasn’t