Death of a Hot Chick Read Free Page A

back.
    “ Nicole.” I reached out to touch her,
then pulled my hand back from the soaking wet, cold
sweater.
    I flashed the light directly in her face.
Nicole...sleeping?
    Unconscious? I pressed below her chin,
checked for a pulse. None.
    “ Take it...now!”
    I’d heard those words before. Had I heard
them again?
    Nicole lay curled and crumpled in the boat
cart, her knees nearly meeting her chest. I stepped back. No, I
didn’t hear anything. I had to call the police. My cell
phone...back in the boat. Could I leave her body? I had to.
And....
    The waves and the wind
whispered, “Now, now, now.”
    I slid two fingers into her hip pocket and
slowly pulled out the plastic bag.
     
     

Chapter 2
     
    Thursday, July 20, 2:11 am
    My entire body shook. I pulled my sweater
tightly around my shoulders. A slight breeze blew off the water and
through the marina, but the day’s heat had barely dissipated.
    “ I don’t know,” I said. Had one of the
state troopers asked a question?
    “ You don’t know the names of the
people in the boat? Yet you went to get a cart for
them?”
    Lizzie spoke up. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Stop
badgering her.”
    At least I remembered Lizzie’s name, but I
knew her from way back. She’d always been around boats, drifting
from one marina or anchorage to another. She was a snoopy,
grandmotherly type who lived like a hermit on an old boat at the
edge of the marina.
    One of the state cops said, “Those people
should have waited for us.”
    “ They had little kids. They were
tired.” After a moment, I added, “They didn’t even see the
body.”
    “ But you don’t know them.”
    “ I’ve seen them a time or two. I don’t
know their names.”
    The second officer stood inches from my
face. “So you went for a cart. Why?” The troopers weren’t from
Smith Harbor.
    “ Boaters help each other, you know?
The kids were tired, they had their hands full.”
    “ You’re damn tootin’,” Lizzie said.
“I’d a helped if I’d been here.”
    “ But you did know the deceased,” the first trooper
said.
    “ I’m working for her. Was working for
her. Fixing her boat.” I wished he would look in Nicole’s other
pocket. “She said she’d be back, so I waited for her. Anyway, I
tried to, but I fell asleep.” Would he give me anything out of that
other pocket, like the thirty dollars? No way. “I guess I got a few
mosquito bites.”
    “ You notice that dead woman is wet,”
Lizzie told him. “I suspect the killer wanted to wash off the
blood. Probably been shot, but not here, because I woulda heard it.
I hear everything. Nothing gets by this one.”
    “ Then you heard the body being dumped
in the cart,” the trooper said.
    “ Maybe.” Lizzie shifted from one foot
to another, a sure sign that she was inventing a story. “Yeah, I
musta heard something. Problem is, I was watching my TV and any
little bump coulda been some static. Lotta that around
here.”
    Definitely one of Lizzie’s stories. If she’d
heard a little bump, she’d have been outside in a flash. Like she
would have been if she’d heard the young couple returning with
their boat. Like she would have been if she’d heard me at the boat
cart. The only thing she’d heard was the patrol car siren as it
turned into the marina. She’d appeared ten minutes later, which was
just enough time to get dressed.
    “ What time was that?” the second
trooper said.
    Without looking at a watch, Lizzie said,
“Exactly thirty-seven minutes ago.”
    Except, it couldn’t have been. Nicole was
dead before that.
    “ Let’s hear it again,” the officer
said, looking straight at me. “It was after midnight and you hadn’t
been out of the boat since Miss Joline left?”
    I rubbed my itching arms. “I’d been on deck.
Nicole said she’d be back, and I said I’d watch for her.”
    “ Then you were out of the
boat.”
    “ But not off the boat. I sat right
there, in the back, before I went inside.”
    “ And whose boat is