OUT ON A LIMB Read Free

to thrift shops and soup kitchens, although my gloomy accountant implies the possibility is not remote. I could easily imagine him perched atop a doorway, pointing at the pizza box and rumbling “Nevermore.” It was unfortunate that my deceased husband had met his demise without the benefit of a life insurance policy, but he’d found coeds more worthy of his attention than his family’s welfare. Then again, he hadn’t anticipated a chicken truck careening down an icy mountain road.
    “Wasn’t there something in the news last year about Oakland Heights?” I asked. “A fire, maybe?”
    Luanne found a country music station to her liking and sat back. “A fire caused by a gas leak, I seem to think. Nothing worthy of Jessica’s breathless coverage.”
    I shrugged, then turned my attention to the increasing amount of traffic as we approached the scene of the demonstration. Oakland Heights was on the east side of Farberville, within the city limits but in an area that still had a few farmhouses, pastures, and stretches of woods. Several sprawling apartment complexes had sprung up since I’d last driven that way. I wondered if Anthony Armstrong was responsible.
    A car pulled out, allowing us to find a space near the entrance to the condos. The lot itself was packed with vehicles parked haphazardly, including a van from the TV station. Jessica Princeton was likely to be inside it, making sure her Up gloss would still glisten if she had to emerge to provide live coverage of Farberville’s first brawl that did not involve fraternity boys, alcohol, and football. As we walked toward the back of the lot, where we presumed Phase Two was in the works, a very irate young man shouted, “Do something, damn it!”
    I stopped, hoping he-was not addressing me since I had no idea what he had in mind. Haul Miss Parchester off the platform? Bulldoze the oak tree? Tie a yellow ribbon around it?
    “Over there,” Luanne whispered.
    In front of one of the units were two young men. Neither was smiling. The one with the more ferocious expression had shaggy black hair that flopped over his forehead, thin lips, and the angular jaw of a pugilist begging for a right hook. He wore a gray sweatshirt and jeans, standard campus attire for all but the dedicated preppies who aspired to become partners in their daddies’ law firms. The other man, his face round and flushed, wore a blue uniform with a patch on his shoulder, leading me to deduce a la Miss Marple that he was the security officer Caron had mentioned.
    The latter began to sputter. “Why doncha give me a break? I already told you I can’t do anything. I warned them they was trespassing when they parked here, but nobody listened/Even the folks from the TV station ignored me. You want I should shoot them all?”
    “I have a seminar in thirty minutes. How am I supposed to get there—hitchhike?”
    “Beats me,” the officer said, then walked toward the back of the parking lot, where the crowd had gathered.
    “This is insane!” howled the floppy-haired man. “There’s no way I can get my car out! What’s happened to my rights as a private citizen? What about my seminar?”
    I decided to “intervene before he went berserk and attacked Miss Parchester and the other Farberville Greens. “Excuse me,” I said, “but we can give you a ride to the campus in a few minutes. I just need to speak to someone, and then I can drop you off in front of whichever building you prefer.”
    “Who are you?” he demanded, huffing and puffing as only a graduate student can.
    Luanne, whose Yankee blood comes to a boil every now and then, nudged me aside. “She is someone who has offered you a ride. If you are concerned that this is a ploy to take you to a remote county road, steal your wallet, and leave your battered body beside a scummy pond where your bodily fluids will be sucked by mosquitoes and leeches, then by all means start hitching a ride. I suggest you do so briskly.”
    He gaped at her,