1 Lost Under a Ladder Read Free

Pluckie’s leash, but she came over to stand by me, confusion making her cock her sweet head as she watched the activity, her fluffy tail wagging slightly, back and forth.
    “It’s okay, girl.” I stooped to pet her as I watched. “You did good.”
    The woman on the floor remained alert enough to talk a bit. The EMTs did what they usually do, I supposed, from what I’d seen their fictional counterparts do on TV.
    I hadn’t been there for my fiancé, Warren, when emergency help had arrived for him. It had been too late anyway.
    “Hey, Martha,” said the female EMT as she fastened a cuff to check blood pressure around the woman’s arm. “Can you tell us what happened?”
    I didn’t hear what she said, since it was drowned out by another siren outside. More help arriving?
    In a minute, two uniformed cops ran inside. I was standing in the store by then with Pluckie, wanting to stay out of the way. “Are you the person who called for help?” asked one of them, a lanky kid with a ruddy face and overbite beneath his buzz-cut hair. His counterpart rushed into the back room.
    “Yes,” I said.
    He whipped a small notebook from his pocket, along with an electronic thing that was probably a recorder. “Give me your name, please.”
    “Rory Chasen.” I also responded to the rest of his questions more or less honestly. Yes, I was here as a tourist. I could say that with a straight face, even if I had an agenda that most tourists didn’t have.
    Or did they? Many probably came looking for answers. Just not the kind I was after.
    “Okay, ma’am. Tell me the reason for your call, what you saw.”
    Ma’am? I supposed that was just normal courtesy, but I sure hoped I didn’t look ancient in my mid-thirties. But no matter how young this cop looked, he had to be beyond high school age to have received police training and a job with the local department.
    And did he think a crime had been committed here, or was this standard operating procedure? I hadn’t seen anything but an apparently ill woman, but maybe there was more than I’d perceived.
    I told the cop all I could remember from the time I entered the store till he arrived with the other police officer. Almost everything, at least. I didn’t know the ill woman, whom the EMTs had called Martha—and I didn’t repeat what she had said about a black and white dog, and how obvious it was, therefore, that she would be fine.
    Why? I wasn’t sure, but it sounded so hokey to me.
    On the other hand, in a town that survived because of superstitions, maybe that was exactly what this guy needed for his notes: a supposed omen of some kind.
    I couldn’t help it. I ended with, “Do you think she was the victim of a crime, officer?”
    “No, ma’am. At least I don’t have any reason to think so. Not yet at least. We just needed to check—” His last couple of words fell from his mouth as if he’d forgotten what he was saying. He was looking over my shoulder, suddenly frozen.
    I turned to see what he was looking at and just caught his shaky salute out of the corner of my eye.
    A man had stepped inside the shop behind me, so I hadn’t noticed. Pluckie had, though. She was standing up, facing him and wagging her tail.
    “What’s wrong with Martha?” the guy demanded, hurrying toward us. “Is she okay?”
    He was tall, with the broadest shoulders I’d ever seen expanding the top of his button-down blue shirt. I assumed, from the way his sleeves bulged, that he was also muscular, but he had a tapered waist and slim-fitting black pants. He brushed past me and looked at the note-taking cop with what appeared to be pain in his brilliant blue eyes.
    “Don’t know, sir. I was just—”
    “Interviewing a potential witness? Fine. I’ll check on her.” He was already inside the back room by the time he finished speaking.
    “Witness?” I asked the cop who remained with me. “Then you do think a crime was committed?”
    He shrugged a shoulder—a much slighter one than