Murder Alfresco #3 Read Free Page B

up at something past three in the morning. He muttered a profanity when he heard who it was.
    “This had better be important, McCoskey,” he said, his tone betraying the fact that he could already tell it was.
    They seemed to run across each other on a regular basis. The last time Sunny had spoken to Sergeant Harvey was at the firefighters’ barbecue fund-raiser a week ago. The time before that, it was when she discovered wine fraud was the motive for the murder of a local restaurateur. Now Sergeant Harvey listened to what she had to tell him, interrupting once to ask her to hold on while he got the officer on duty headed over there, pronto. After a moment he came back on the line.
    “Sunny? I’m leaving now. A patrol car is on the way. You can tell me the rest when I get there.” He paused. “You want to stay on the line while I drive over?”
    “No, I’m okay.”
    “Good. Stay put and I’ll be there in fifteen, twenty minutes, tops. Don’t do anything, touch anything, or go anywhere. Stay by the phone and call me if anything happens, and I mean anything.”
    “Right.”
    Sunny hung up. Her hands were shaking and her face was wet, with perspiration or tears she wasn’t sure which. As much as she wanted to stay inside huddled against the wall behind the desk, the girl outside was alone and she couldn’t leave her there. There had to be a chance, an impossibly small chance, but a chance nevertheless, that she was still alive. Sunny wiped her face on her sleeve and climbed back out the window onto the porch.
    She noted with surprise that it felt better to be outside. The terror of being watched in the open was preferable to the terror of being trapped inside. And Steve had pointed out that whoever was responsible was unlikely to linger at the scene, waiting to get caught.
    She went back to the girl. Nothing about her suggested life. Sunny took off her scarf and draped it around the girl’s shoulders, covering her body as best she could, then sat down at her feet and waited for the police to arrive. The breeze agitated the body slightly, and her feet, toes neatly painted, each nail a pink oval gem, stirred the air in tiny circles. Her vigil lasted twelve minutes. It was the longest twelve minutes she had ever experienced.

    “Why don’t you start with why the hell you were out wandering around on private property at three o’clock in the morning,” said Sergeant Harvey.
    “It’s a long story,” said Sunny, shivering despite the jacket he had pulled out of the trunk of the squad car for her.
    “Bore me,” he said, looking hard into her eyes.
    Sergeant Harvey was a solid brick of a man with muscular arms that he folded across his chest when he was asking questions, like he was now. Sunny had woken him up, she was sure of that, but his short blond hair was as meticulously groomed as ever, a tiny army standing uniformly at attention. He had a fundamentally gentle nature, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be intimidating. At the moment, his manner was anything but soothing.
    “Hang on,” he said, looking around. “Let’s do this right the first time.”
    Sunny followed him over to a teak lawn bench. They sat down and she waited while he set up a pocket tape recorder between them, then recited the facts of the situation into it.
    Sunny stared at the police team swarming around the girl’s body. Two police cars and an ambulance had their headlights trained on the oak tree, casting a confusion of shadows. The areahad been cordoned off and officers were scouring the scene, gathering evidence. The photographer’s flash illuminated the girl’s face unexpectedly, burning the image of her purple lips and tongue, the black gash above her eye, and the tableau of gray and yellow bruised flesh into Sunny’s mind. She turned away, fighting the urge to be sick. Sergeant Harvey looked at her, silently asking if she was ready. She nodded.
    “I want you to tell me how you came to discover the deceased tonight,”