Sarah Booth Delaney 13.50 - Shorty Bones Read Free Page A

physical therapist. It was best for me to leave anyway. PT made him bearish, and not in a good way.
    “Winning is all that matters, Sarah Booth.”
    I stopped in my tracks. “That’s the antithesis of what Mama and Daddy believed.”
    “Beware. If you go into the ring with compassion in your heart, you’ll end up a grease spot on the mat.” She made a fearsome face and let out a high-pitched screech that had Sweetie Pie rushing into my room on the hunt for banshees. Graf couldn’t hear her, thank goodness, but my ears were on the verge of bleeding.
    I tied my shoes and stood, ready to take the argument to her corner, but as usual, she was gone. I hustled to Alysa’s Pilates Studio to keep an eye on Lovey. Whatever she was up to, I was determined to find out.
    And I didn’t have long to wait. The class was only in the warm-up phase when the power to the studio went out. We were in an interior room with no windows, only mirrors. Pitch black. I moved instinctively toward the front of the room where Lovey had been—only to hear an earth-shattering scream. I wanted to clap my hands over my already abused ears, but I rushed toward the scream just in time to smack into a figure clad in a trench coat. Without thinking, I snatched the fedora off the person’s head and delivered a kick to the gut that had nothing to do with the finesse of training and everything to do with cold, hard fear.
    The figure grunted and then I heard the door slam. Panic broke out in the room, and sobbing. When the lights came on, Lovey was crumpled on the floor. A long, ugly gash on her thigh was bleeding. Maybe she wasn’t faking after all.
    I dialed 911 and then Tinkie. A trip to the hospital was on my agenda. When I helped Lovey to her feet and began the journey to my car, I was surprised at the TV cameras outside the studio. I pushed past them and had Lovey on Doc Sawyer’s exam table in less than fifteen minutes.
    Half an hour later, Doc motioned me into his office. “Care for a cup of coffee?” he asked.
    “Sure.” I was in the mood to live dangerously. Doc’s coffee might possibly be the cure for cancer, or the cause of it. I’d never seen java so black and thick. “How badly is she hurt?”
    “Really just a scratch. I used some glue to pull the skin together. It probably won’t even scar.”
    “But there was a lot of blood.”
    “Surface capillaries. She was lucky. The blade never went deeper than an eighth of an inch.”
    “Thanks, Doc. She said she was calling Curtis to pick her up and I need to run over to Coleman’s.” I had the fedora. With any luck at all, Coleman might be able to pick up some DNA to identify the attacker—if there was a match in the CODIS files.
    I dropped off the fedora at the S.O. and Deputy DeWayne Dattilo assured me he’d take samples and get them to the lab. Tinkie was waiting outside when I left the building.
    “The news coverage made me think Lovey was near death. Every news station in Memphis had a live crew here. And the Jackson stations, too.”
    “Don’t you find that a little strange?” A very bad idea was beginning to take shape in my mind.
    Tinkie paused. “How did they get here so fast? They were waiting.”
    “Exactly.”
    “What is Lovey up to?” Tinkie narrowed her eyes. “We’re being used.”
    “She was perfectly willing to cough up a big retainer fee because she fears she’s being stalked, yet she posts her schedule to Facebook every day. She’s attacked at Pilates, and the TV cameras are there to cover it.”
    “This is a publicity stunt.” Tinkie put the name to the action.
    “The question is why?”
    “I know where to start looking for that answer.” Tinkie whipped out her cell phone and in a moment was talking to the assignment editor at WKIT in Memphis. “I see,” she said about ten times. “Thanks, Bitsy. That’s exactly what I needed to know.”
    When she hung up, she motioned me to the passenger seat of the Cadillac. “Let’s talk and drive. The TV