Read Online Murder Gets a Life by Anne George - Free Book Online Page A

around two-thirty in the morning asking me if I had her big straw hat, the one she had gotten at Kmart for fifty cents last winter. She had been planning on wearing a safari hat, but that might not be enough. And did I have any Deep-Woods Off? God knows we didn’t want to come down with Lyme disease and Henry said those woods were crawling with ticks. He was going with her, incidentally, as was Tiffany, the Magic Maid. And someone should bring some food, shouldn’t they? Maybe the restaurant up there would deliver, considering it was an emergency.
    Fred rolled over. “Mary Alice?”
    I nodded. He took the phone from me, said into it, “Go to sleep,” hung it up, and then took it from its cradle. “There.”
    “That was rude.”
    “I know.”
    In a few minutes, I could hear him snoring lightly. But I was wide awake. I got up, went to the den, and lay down on the sofa. I read for a while and had just dropped off to sleep when Fred came to tell me it was time to get up.
    The dirt road widened and we were at the Turkett Compound.
    “Hey, look at those trailers in a circle,” Fred said. “That’s neat.”
    “They’re manufactured homes,” I snapped.
    “You need some more coffee, don’t you, honey?”
    A uniformed man pointed toward a field on the left which had been turned into a makeshift parking lot. At one time it must have been a cotton field. We bounced over the rows, past ten or twelve cars, including Mary Alice’s. One of her best traits is her punctuality. If she says she’ll be somewhere at a certain time, then by damn, she’ll be there. Fred says it’s because she’s scared she’ll miss something. Whatever. I think it’s admirable.
    “Looks like there are quite a few people here,” Fred said. “Did Haley have any idea when she could make it?”
    “She said they had a couple of bypasses this morning and it depended on how they went.” Haley is a scrub nurse with a cardiac surgical unit. I wondered how she was going to work it out with them, leaving so suddenly. “Philip had a full schedule today. Trying to get everybody’s sinuses unstopped before he leaves, I guess.”
    “I looked up Poland in the atlas last night. It’s not so far. You can probably get direct flights from Atlanta.”
    “Uh huh.”
    Fred turned off the ignition. “Listen, honey.Chances are this thing today isn’t going to turn out very well. I want you to be prepared and not get too upset. Okay?”
    “Well, at least it’s not the wrong time of the month for me.” I smiled sweetly and got out of the car. I knew which one of us would have to be resuscitated if things didn’t turn out well, a nice way of saying if we found Sunshine’s body.
    Fred caught up with me and took my hand. “I know you’re just tired and need something to eat.”
    How can my feelings for this man, after all these years, be so wildly vacillating? One minute I’m furious, and the next minute I’m mushy. Go figure.
    About forty people were gathered in the circle that the trailers formed. Apparently no instructions had been given by the sheriff as everyone was milling around aimlessly. I spotted Mary Alice, Henry, and Tiffany sitting on the steps of Pawpaw’s trailer and waved to them.
    “You’re late,” Sister greeted us.
    “Doesn’t look like we missed much.” I looked around. “Is there any coffee?”
    “I’ll get y’all some,” Tiffany volunteered. She turned and banged on Pawpaw’s door. When he stuck his head out, she held up her Styrofoam cup and two fingers.
    “Cream and sugar?” Pawpaw asked.
    “I want cream and sugar,” I said.
    Tiffany held up one finger; Pawpaw nodded and disappeared.
    “Y’all sit down.” Henry moved over to make room for us on the steps. “We’re waiting for the sheriff. He’s over in that trailer”—Henry pointed toward Kerrigan’s—“talking to Sunshine’s mother.”
    “Doing something to Sunshine’s mother,” Sister said. “He’s been in there a half hour.”
    “Where’s