Read Online Shadows on the Sand by Gayle Roper - Free Book Online Page B

barricade,” Cilla said. “Marleysghost has pictures on YouTube!”
    Everything stopped as everyone, including the cook, the baker, and both my servers went to Marleysghost’s YouTube post.
    “Ricky,” I yelled. “All the cheese in the grilled cheese for booth one is melting out of the sandwich! And smoke’s beginning to swirl. Quick or we’ll have the smoke alarms blaring!”
    Ricky grinned at me and cocked his head toward our customers. “They’ll never notice.”
    How true.
    He flipped the sandwich, and it was fine—which I knew. I’d just been trying to keep his mind on his job.
    When Maureen and Rog came in around one thirty to hear my version of the incident at the Sand and Sea, I thought my remaining customers would twist their heads off their shoulders as they tried to watch what we were doing and eavesdrop on our conversation. When we went to the back of the café and my office, there was a collective groan.
    “Don’t worry,” Lindsay called to them, waving her smartphone. “I’ll keep you updated.”
    Not if I didn’t keep her updated.
    I closed the office door behind the three of us, relieved to be free of being reported on. Who knew being a celebrity was so wearing? But if it meant more business …
    “I’ve got a question for you guys,” I said. “How come there isn’t an army of texters out there looking for Jason Peoples?” I’d been thinking about that for the last hour. “If some idiot ramming a building got everyone so excited, you’d think a missing person would make them froth at the mouth.”
    “Good question.” Rog looked around my cluttered office. “We’ll have to get SweetCilla and Mary P on it. Our sources haven’t come up with much.”
    “Tell me you don’t follow them on Twitter,” I said.
    “You’d be surprised what those two ladies have uncovered.” Maureen looked around for seats.
    I indicated my desk chair. “Yours, Maureen.” I pulled a pair of folding chairs from against the wall, offered one to Rog, and took the other.
    Maureen sat with caution in the desk chair, well used when I got it. It only wobbled slightly. “As to Jason Peoples, we do know he had a fight with a guy, big and with dark hair, first name Bill. We’re looking for that guy as a person of interest, but we don’t know much else.”
    So Bill hadn’t followed Greg’s advice and gone to the police. I wasn’t surprised. My feeling was that Bill would buck authority without a second thought, convinced that he, ruler of his small universe, knew better than they. After all, their only purpose was to interfere with his life.
    Maureen appeared frustrated. “No one at the party knew this Bill, or so they say. They’re all telling us he crashed the party with some pretty girl with strawberry-blond hair and he got into the fight over her.”
    I flinched. Andi. “You’re looking for Bill Lindemuth.”
    Maureen looked blank, but Rog, a lifetime resident of Seaside, perked up. “The football hero of a couple of years ago?”
    I nodded. “He was in the café this morning for breakfast.”
    “Yeah? How do you know he’s the guy we’re looking for?”
    I hesitated for a moment, feeling like a traitor but knowing I had to tell them what I knew. Finding Jase was more important than the almost certain possibility of angering Bill or upsetting Andi.
    “You need to talk to my server, Andi Mueller. She’s a friend of his. In fact she’s the girl he was with at the party. But she’s only sixteen. Take it easy on her.”

8

    G reg Barnes stood alone, staring at the damage done to the Sand and Sea. The locksmith had come and gone, but what good was a new lock on the front door when the wall was an open invitation to the crooked and the curious?
    He’d called his boss to report what had happened, and with any luck he’d be gone before Josh showed up.
    He sighed. Sooner or later he’d have to talk with the man. He just preferred it to be later. After all, it was imperative he go to Home Depot