Dead In Red Read Free

and
headed out of the kitchen. “You’re going to do what you want
anyway, so—get on with it.”
    I avoided Richard’s accusing stare, added
milk to my coffee and stirred it. Stir-crazy, huh? Too often,
Brenda could read me, too. Still . . .
    I faced my brother. “You want to come with
me?”
    Richard blinked. “To work?”
    “No, to check out where the guy got
stabbed.”
    “I thought you weren’t getting involved in
this?”
    “I’m not. I’m just curious.”
    “And curiosity killed the cat.”
    I sipped my coffee. “I figure I’ve got at
least eight lives left.”
    “Don’t kid yourself, Jeff. You could’ve died
from that mugging.”
    “And I could get hit by a bus going to the
grocery store. Are you coming or not?”
    Richard drained his cup, pushed back his
chair and rose. “I’ll come.”
     
    * * *
     
    The vibrant green grass down the steep grade stood out in chunky tufts,
belligerent in the wake of someone’s weed whacker. It had probably
been cropped a week before, but already looked long and lanky and
ready to defy another swipe by a plastic whip cord. A six-foot
remnant of yellow crime tape fluttered in the breeze. Twenty or
thirty feet below and a hundred yards further on, Ellicott Creek
rushed past.
    Ignoring the “Danger—No Trespassing” signs,
Richard craned his neck to gaze down the hill. “So where was the
dead guy found?”
    “I’m not sure.” I glanced over my shoulder
at the scarlet-painted barn of a building that hugged the
embankment. As in years before, a huge stone wheel once again
milled corn, wheat and rye, but was the end product more for show
than commerce? Pallets of ground grains in sacks sealed in plastic
were stacked on the mill’s back porch. The north end of the
building housed a little café and bakery. Could they really use
that much flour?
    “Tell me about the murdered man,” Richard
said.
    I repeated what Tom had told me the night
before.
    “You get any impressions yet?”
    “Depends on your definition of impressions.
So far, not here. But I did flash onto something weird that relates
to the dead guy last night at the bar. Probably because he spent so
much time there. I don’t know what it means.” And I wasn’t ready to
talk about it.
    Richard did not look pleased, but he didn’t
push. He understood what I’d said—that I was already caught up in
the guy’s death, and that something beyond my usual senses was
going to feed me information about it until . . . well,
corny as it sounds . . . until justice was done. One way
or another.
    Goat-footed, I tramped down the rocky slope,
over flattened grass and weeds to where the crime tape flapped. As
Tom said, there was nothing much to see. No blood marred the spot.
The ground hadn’t been dug up for evidence. Had Walt been killed
elsewhere and just dumped here?
    I closed my eyes and the flash of what
I’d seen the night before came back to me. A
sparkling—sequins?—woman’s stiletto-heeled shoe. I tried to tap
into that memory once again, opening myself up, but it was someone
else’s experience that assaulted me. Walt’s
face, chalk white—his body drained of blood. Milky eyes open,
staring up at the sky.
    Nausea erupted within me, doubling me over.
I grabbed onto a sapling to keep from falling down the hill,
retching, choking, until the inevitable. Then Richard was beside
me, his hand on my shoulder until my stomach had finished expelling
my breakfast.
    “What the hell happened?” he demanded.
    I coughed, gasping, trying to catch my
breath. “Not me. I got caught in someone’s reaction to seeing Walt.
I dunno. Maybe some rookie cop’s first time seeing a body.”
    “Good Lord,” Richard muttered.
    I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand.
Poor Walt had been dumped here like so much garbage.
    “Excuse me, but what are you doing
here?”
    We both turned. A tall, buxom blonde stood
between the sacks of grain stacked on the porch. The morning sun
highlighted the fine lines around her