Read Online Swan Dive by Kendel Lynn - Free Book Online

pages, capturing each one. I put my phone in my pocket and the book back in the trunk. Pulled open the shutters at the window. They opened like a door. As I pushed the window lock open, I looked up. Straight at the neighbors in the next building, their window not five feet away. They were playing cards with their blinds wide open.
    I slammed the shutter shut and raced across the hall into the master. I slid open the glass balcony door. My skirt caught on the hamper and I remembered the iPad. Hesitated half a second, then ran to the entryway. Muffled voices were right outside the door. The knob rattled. I grabbed the iPad and ran back to the master.
    It was now black as pitch outside. The moon barely shone through the heavy cover of palm fronds and oak branches.
    I shut the glass door and turned. I was trapped on the balcony. It wasn’t a wraparound to the front as I’d assumed. It was a short, private balcony railed in on three sides with the glass door behind me making up the fourth. I peered over the side. Not too high up and the branches were fairly close to the rail. Voices got louder. I climbed one leg over the side. The bark of the branch ripped into my arm and I swore. Loudly.
    The voices stopped. I held my breath, then did what needed to be done.
    I meowed.
    Holding onto the branch, I pulled my other leg over the side of the balcony, and shimmied to the ground, meowing all the way and keeping the swear words to myself. My skirt hooked on a baby branch near the bottom, and it poked my thigh. I landed on my feet with a soft thud.
    I duck walked with my head dipped low back to the Mini. Its ice blue color looked bright beneath the street lamp. Note to self: when breaking and entering, do not park directly under the street lights. And don’t wear something billowy. I checked for rips and tears, but somehow managed to come away with only stains and smudges on my flowing skirt and once lovely white shirt.
    Sid walked down the steps and over to the building next door. I drove around and picked her up.
    “Who came home?” I asked. “I was only in there like five minutes.”
    “More like twenty, Trixie Belden,” she said and strapped on her seatbelt. “It was the Mouse King.”
    “Berg? Really? He probably didn’t stay for the second act.”
    “What took so long? I was hanging out front like a call girl waiting for a trick to walk by. An expensive call girl, mind you.”
    “Hey, I’m the one who got all scratched up.” I parked behind the building and took out my phone. “Check these out.”
    The first three pictures were completely blurry. I couldn’t even tell they were sketches. The next was a clear shot of my finger.
    “Slightly anti-climactic,” Sid said.
    “There’s more.” I flipped through two more and then got to the money.
    “A death sketch?” Sid said.
    “There were a dozen of them, and all of Lexie. Drawn by Berg the Mouse King.”
    “Wowza. He seemed so nice.” She leaned over the phone to get a better look. “I guess he’s your number one suspect. You sharing these with Ransom?”
    “Um, no. And not only because I shouldn’t have seen these. Fruit of the poisoned tree, so to speak.”
    “How apropos.”
    “I know what I’m doing,” I said and tucked my phone into my handbag.
    “You have leaves in your hair.”
    I plucked at them and tossed a handful out the window. “Now I need to figure out a way for Berg to show me those sketches or for someone else to find them and show me or talk about them or something.”
    “You’ll figure it out,” Sid said. “At least you know who your bad guy is.”
    “There’s more than one. Vigo isn’t so innocent, either. He had a shooting target hidden in his closet.”
    “Blank?”
    “Shot to shit.”
    “That’s something.”
    “Might be nothing. He does live in Texas now.”
    I unlatched my seatbelt and started to get out of the car.
    “Where are you going?” Sid asked.
    “The dumpster. The trash had recently been emptied. We need