Eine Kleine Murder Read Free Page A

kitchen where I heard him dialing and speaking softly, much calmer than I could have been. After he hung up he said they were sending an ambulance.
    The cup of tea Grace handed me rattled in the saucer and it warmed me up a bit. Al accompanied me down the hill, just in time to see them load her body, zipped into a dark bag, into the back. They had commandeered a boat to get her to this side of the lake. From the looks of the dripping EMT, he had done more than a little wading in the process.
    My legs threatened to give way. I swayed and Al caught me.
    â€œWhere are you taking her?” I asked the technicians, barely able to talk through my chattering teeth. I wasn’t cold—on the outside at least—but couldn’t stop shivering.
    The young female driver walked over to me as the EMTs slammed the back door of the ambulance.
    â€œThat’s my grandmother,” I whispered.
    â€œI’m so sorry. We’ll take her to the funeral home here in Alpha. That’s the usual procedure until she can be looked at.”
    â€œCan I come?” I asked, not wanting to let her go with these people. It was a struggle to understand her words, to make sense of what was happening around me.
    â€œThere’s really no need. There’s nothing you can do tonight.” Her voice was gentle, handling me like I might break. “You can go in tomorrow to make arrangements. The coroner ought to take a look at her, but he’s out of town until the day after tomorrow. We’ll have the doctor in Cambridge pronounce her tonight. I’m surprised. No one has drowned out here for a few years.”
    â€œYes, but—” My voice caught, unable to finish my thought. It would have been a denial that she drowned, but I was looking at the evidence in that horrid bag.
    The ambulance driver reached out to touch my arm, hesitated, then gave me a pat and climbed into the driver’s seat.
    Debussy had long ago given way to Chopin’s ponderous Funeral March, the stark piano version. The one Gram had encouraged me to practice over and over for a recital. I watched my beloved Gram disappear with the taillights as they bounced along the gravel road, then faded to nothing.

    At last I was alone in Gram’s cabin. All the things I had wanted to say to her jumbled together in my mind, whirled round and round, and ceased making an iota of sense.
    Al and Grace had been wonderful. They’d even offered to let me spend the night there, but I wanted to be alone in Gram’s place.
    My note to Gram sat where I’d left it. With more force than necessary, I grabbed it and wadded it into a tight ball.
    â€œOh, Grammie, I hope you know …” I couldn’t finish the thought. The incomprehensible echoed in my mind: she drowned . The impact of those two words was simply unbearable. And how could a mere two words describe the fact I no longer had a grandmother, that she was lost to me forever?
    One of the supports of my life, my Gram, was gone. A chasm was opening under me and I teetered at the edge of it.
    I needed to talk to someone. Neek.

    I had met the person who became my best friend only a year ago. Even though we lived in the same apartment building, and I knew her by sight, we connected in a yoga class given at a nearby high school. We were as different as a bass viol and a flute. Neek was definite about everything and always knew her place in the world, whereas I would probably always be tentative about my abilities, despite Neek’s assurance that I was talented, smart, and not too bad-looking. She later said she predicted we’d be friends the first night of that class.
    My cell phone wasn’t in my purse. I remembered it was plugged in. Peter was charged now, but had zero connection bars. I took it out onto the glassed-in porch, built out over the hill on the back of the cabin. It held cheerful-looking white wicker furniture, a rocker, a settee, and tables, as well as a brass daybed