Read Online Murder Take Two by Charlene Weir - Free Book Online Page A

me.”
    She let a beat go by, then another, then tossed off, “Okay.”
    Yancy attempted to help her down the ladder and got a kick for his attentions.
    â€œWhere are you taking me?” she asked when they passed from the dimness of the barn out into bright sunlight.
    â€œLaura Edwards’s trailer to answer some questions by the higher-ups.”
    â€œThat guy that looks like a grizzly about to attack? What’s his name?”
    â€œThe lieutenant, that who you’re talking about? Parkhurst.”
    â€œHe’s a cop,” she said, getting everything clear.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œI don’t want to talk to him.”
    â€œThey just want to find out what happened.”
    â€œI saw him before.”
    â€œBefore what?” Yancy asked, sitting hard on exasperation.
    â€œHe was hanging around the barn during the lunch break, when nobody else was here.”
    Yancy delivered her at the trailer and wondered if that crack about the lieutenant had any truth in it.
    *   *   *
    Susan pulled her blouse untucked as she opened the door of the pickup. The sky was taking on the hue of cobalt blue. The air was finally cooling down a little—it damn well should at almost seven-thirty—but the pickup, having baked all afternoon, was like an oven. She pushed on the air-conditioning, then pushed it off and cranked down the windows. With the truck in motion, a little air passed through and it smelled of coming dusk and recently cut grasses and lilacs. Cicadas hummed somewhere. Her mind replayed the session with Clem Jones. Susan couldn’t get a clear fix on Clem. One minute she was world-weary, the next smart-ass, the next lost and bewildered. Parkhurst was surprisingly easy on her. Susan wondered why.
    Parkhurst and Laura Edwards. Talk about surprise. Wife, for God’s sake.
    Lately, her interest in Parkhurst had just as much to do with hormones as business. She’d listed all the reasons why it wasn’t a good idea, why she’d be a damn fool. And then this famous actress comes along, wraps herself around him, and Susan is as green-eyed as any teenager. Jesus. What a mess.
    Focus on the dead woman and how she got that way. Get over to the Sunflower Hotel and go through Kay Bender’s room. Find out next of kin and notify. Go through all the statements of cast and crew and see what doesn’t fit. Find out when Owen Fisher had scheduled the autopsy and be there. Probably early tomorrow morning. Attending autopsies, while not her favorite activity, sometimes turned up important information that got to her quicker than if she’d waited for the formal report.
    Okay? That enough to keep your mind in check? It still wandered back to Parkhurst and Laura Edwards.
    Get a grip.
    She drove along Main Street, a street paved with red bricks and lined with tall maples, and thought as she had many times before that Hampstead was actually a pretty little town. In the gathering dusk, the old-fashioned lantern-shaped streetlights glowed softly throwing out pools of gold. The buildings, many of them made of native limestone, were old and impressive with fancy cornices and parapets. At Seventh Street, she turned left past the courthouse, a Gothic-style type with a clock tower; the stone had mellowed over the years to a warm cream color. It had been built in 1906, the year of the San Francisco earthquake.
    San Francisco. Maybe now was the time to go back where she belonged.
    Can’t. Work to do.
    She pulled into the lot behind the police department, a relatively new building, red brick with white trim, and nosed in beside Parkhurst’s Bronco. Sliding from the truck, she glanced up at the communications tower to make sure the owl was still standing sentry. Birds tended to roost there and interfere with transmitting and receiving, sometimes to the point of reducing everything to fuzz. The stuffed owl was to keep them away. Detective Osey Pickett’s idea.