Read Online Lethal by Sandra Brown - Free Book Online Page B

medicine cabinet above the sink. “You’d better douse it with peroxide.”
    She passed the bottle to him. He uncapped it and did as she suggested, liberally pouring the peroxide directly over the wound. She winced. “Is it deep? You may need stitches.”
    “This’ll do for now.”
    “How did it happen?”
    “I was running with my head down, trying to see the ground. Ran into a low tree branch.” He tossed the bloody towel to the floor. “What do you care?”
    She said nothing to that, but she didn’t believe he actually expected her to reply. He retrieved the items from the window ledge in the shower stall. He slid the pistol into the waistband of Eddie’s jeans. They were a bit short, Honor noted, and the waistband was a tad too large. The cell phones, money, and odd piece of paper went into the front pockets. Then, gathering up his socks and boots, he said, “You can open the door now.”
    As they left the bathroom, Honor said, “While we were locked up in there, someone could have come along searching for you. You would have been trapped.”
    “That had occurred to me, but I wasn’t too worried about it. Thanks to your father-in-law I know where they’re concentrating the search.”
    “Where you stole the boat?”
    “It’s miles from here. It’ll take them a while to pick up my scent again.”
    “Are you
shore
?” Mrs. Arleeta Thibadoux squinted doubtfully. “ ’Cause they’re crazy, mean kids, always into trouble of one kind or another. I ’spect they do drugs.”
    Tom VanAllen had yielded the floor to Fred Hawkins, letting the police officer interview the owner of the small boat that had gone missing in the approximate area where Lee Coburn had last been seen. Or was thought to have last been seen. That he was the man the motorist with the flat tire had spotted as he ran into the woods couldn’t be confirmed either, but it was all they had, so they were following it up as though it was a strong lead.
    The trio of boys of questionable repute, who lived a quarter mile from Mrs. Thibadoux, had been interrogated and dismissed as the suspected boat thieves. Last night, they’d been in New Orleans with several friends prowling the French Quarter. They’d slept over—passed out, more accurately—in the van belonging to one of those friends and had just straggled home, hungover and bleary-eyed, just as Tambour police had arrived to question them.
    This had been explained to Mrs. Thibadoux, who wasn’t quite ready to rule them out as the culprits. “I had to holler at them just a few days ago. Saw them down there at the dock messing around with my boat.”
    “Their friends can vouch for their whereabouts since eight o’clock last night,” Fred told her.
    “Hm. Well.” She sniffed. “That boat weren’t worth much, anyhow. I hadn’t took it out since my husband died. Thought many times about selling it but never got around to it.” She grinned, revealing a space where a critical tooth should have been. “It’ll be worth more money now if that killer got away in it. If you find it, don’t let nobody do nothing to it.”
    “No, ma’am, we won’t.”
    Fred tipped his hat to her and made his way past the bird dogs sprawled on her porch. As he came down the steps, he opened a stick of gum, offering the pack to Tom.
    “No thanks.” Tom swiped a trickle of sweat off his forehead and waved at the swarm of gnats that had taken a liking to him. “You think Coburn took her boat?”
    “Could’ve just got loose from her dock and drifted with the current,” Fred said. “But she swears it was secure. In any case, we gotta assume it was Coburn and try to locate it.”
    Frustration made Fred’s reply sound terse, even obligatory. Tom could tell that the police officer’s patience was wearing thin. The longer Coburn was at large, the better his odds for escaping. Fred was beginning to feel the pressure. He was giving the chewing gum a workout.
    “My office called while you were talking to