Read Online Murder Comes by Mail by A. H. Gabhart - Free Book Online Page B

Eagleton papers had to say about you?”
    “No.” Michael headed down the street.
    Hank trotted after him. “Just wait. Next time I make a hero, I’ll pick somebody like, like . . .” Hank hesitated as if no likely candidate would come to mind until he noticed Paul Osgood checking parking meters down the street. “Like Paul. Now he’d appreciate being a hero even if he’s a little short for the job.”
    Paul was at least ten feet away from them, but at the word “short,” his head whipped around.
    “He couldn’t have heard me, could he?” Hank looked in the opposite direction from Paul, who was glaring at them. “I won’t be able to park in my own driveway without getting a parking ticket.”
    Michael laughed, which caused a dark look to thunder across Paul’s face.
    “You’re not helping.” Hank frowned at Michael. “Now he thinks we’re laughing at him. Uh-oh, here he comes. We were talking about Cindy’s strawberry shortcake.”
    “That hasn’t been on the menu for weeks.”
    “But we were wishing it was, okay?”
    Hank looked so desperate, Michael took pity on him. “It would taste good with a scoop of ice cream on top.”
    “That’s the way to play the game.” Hank held up the articles and let them flap in the breeze. “That’s all this other is too. Just a game. Play along a few days. Talk to the reporters, smile for the cameras, and endure it when the average Joe tells you how great you are. By next week everybody will have forgotten. That’s why they call it being hero for a day. A week at the outside.”
    Paul was definitely in earshot now, and Hank switched seamlessly to the virtues of Cindy’s shortcake, making sure to say shortcake every other word.
    Paul gave him a look. “You’re going to have a heart attack if you don’t learn to control that appetite, Leland.”
    “Ah, life is full of forbidden pleasures for sure, Paul.”
    Paul looked at him suspiciously, as if he suspected some kind of double meaning in his words, but Hank looked as innocent as a four-year-old kid bringing a wilted bouquet of dandelions to his mother. Paul turned to Michael. “Well, Keane, I hear you were in the right place at the right time again.” He tried to quit frowning, but the thin line of his lips didn’t lose their downward tilt.
    Paul Osgood had to force himself to give Michael the time of day. He disliked Michael, partly because Michael had once been a policeman in the big city before coming back to Hidden Springs to grab headlines that should have been Paul’s, but mostly because Michael was tall. Paul was short. It was the tragedy of his existence. He believed if he were only a few inches taller, he would have been accepted at the police academy to train as a state policeman. Then he wouldn’t be stuck working for the chief of police, who happened to also be his father-in-law. He was tired of writing parking tickets the judge tore up if folks complained.
    Buck Garrett claimed it would take a lot more than an extra inch for Little Osgood to make the state police, but if the man wanted to believe it was a lack of height instead of brains, then maybe that was for the best.
    Michael had finally talked to Buck early that morning. Buck had information about the recovered stolen vehicle. He hadn’t even heard about the jumper. He rarely read the newspapers, but he promised to go by T.R.’s station out near the interstate to get the VIN number and run a check on the man’s car.
    Michael tried to call Alex a couple of times too, but had to settle with leaving a message on her voice mail. He never knew what to say on voice mail and ended up saying something idiotic like, “Hi, heard you called. Sorry I missed you. Hope you’re winning.” What he really wanted to say was, “Hidden Springs isn’t so bad. Sheridan and Sheridan would look good on a shingle outside your uncle’s office. Hidden Springs needs you. I need you.”
    She’d laugh at that. All of it, from the prospect of her ever