Annie's Neighborhood (Harlequin Heartwarming) Read Free Page A

funeral, and the others left before me, arriving home first. The center house belongs to my grandmother, Ida Vance,” Annie said, then with trembling lips corrected and stammered, “N-no, that’s not true. It’s my home now.”
    Sky glanced up from the sheet on which he was scribbling. “Is it Miss or Mrs. Emerson?”
    “Ms.,” she said. Was he trying to learn her marital status? Why? None of his business in any case. “You should speak to Peggy and George Gilroy or Mike and Missy Spurlock. I didn’t go in because I didn’t want to disturb any evidence. I assume my neighbors came home straight from the cemetery.” Annie chewed on her lip. “That would’ve been a little before one o’clock. Instead of calling the police, they contacted repairmen.” Gazing directly at Sky, Annie added, “I gathered they thought contacting you was pointless.”
    Sky bristled, immediately going on the defensive. “At the moment, I and three officers cover all of Briar Run. Our open cases consist of two rapes, an unsolved drive-by shooting and a couple of gang-related drug deals,” he said, waving his pen. “Petty crimes do sometimes get wait-listed.”
    The woman facing him didn’t so much as flinch, which made Sky wonder about her. He thought most females would. “You call a bold, daytime break-in of three homes, with wanton destruction of property, a petty crime? ”
    Koot grabbed Sky’s arm and tugged him toward the two couples who stood by the houses. “I’ll dust these places for fingerprints as soon as we collect a list of missing items, Chief.”
    Sky nodded, still gritting his teeth.
    George Gilroy leaned on his cane, and looked uncomfortable when the two cops joined him. After a bit of probing, he admitted, “We lost a TV, a DVD player and a pearl necklace Peggy had left out on her dresser. The thieves grabbed the easy stuff.”
    Peggy piped up. “But other things got broken. Some dishes seemed to be randomly swept off our sideboard.”
    “Ms. Emerson guessed you got home around one,” Sky said. “It’s three now. Were the perpetrators gone when you arrived?”
    “Hi, I’m Mike Spurlock.” The younger man barged into the group. “The thieves must’ve heard us drive in, or else they had a lookout posted. I noticed our broken windows and told Missy to stay in the car. I entered the house through a side door, and saw our back door swinging as if they’d just run out. After I made sure there was no one inside, I had my wife come in to make a note of what all they took.”
    “Our new flat-screen TV is gone, along with some wedding gifts I hadn’t even taken out of their boxes,” Missy said tearfully. “A vase, a duplicate coffeemaker I intended to return. We’re starting out our married life and don’t own much yet.” Missy Spurlock curled into her husband’s embrace.
    Sky, who was scribbling everything down, turned to Annie. “What was taken from your place?”
    “I told you I didn’t go inside. And even if I went from room to room, I might not know what’s missing.”
    “Why not?”
    “I’m visiting, or I have been for two weeks. This is the home where I grew up, but I, ah, have been living in California until I came to see about my grandmother’s health.”
    Sky tapped his pen impatiently on the clipboard again. “You can’t say what’s gone, yet you were most adamant about wanting us to solve this case. The truth is, Ms. Emerson, odds are everything stolen today has already been hocked and the money divvied up.”
    “It sounds as if you know who did this. So, can’t you round them up for questioning?”
    Pretty as she was, her barbs got Sky’s back up. “It’s an all-too-familiar pattern,” he admitted. “If I were a betting man, which I’m not, my money would go on poor, dumb, local kids acting as puppets controlled by drug-dealer puppeteers from Louisville. Oh, I’d like to knock some sense into these kids—tell them they’re lucky to have folks, whether or not the family