The Candy Cane Cupcake Killer Read Free Page B

what happened to Barney,” he said.
    For a brief moment, Phyllis had forgotten all about McCrory’s mysterious collapse. She had been so relieved that Sam was all right, she hadn’t been able to think about anything else.
    As he climbed down from the pickup bed, she turned toward the front of the carriage. Sam moved past her and pulled himself up on the metal step the driver used to climb up and down from the box. He reached over and took hold of McCrory’s shoulder.
    â€œBarney! Barney, can you hear me?”
    But when Phyllis saw the way McCrory’s head lolled limply as Sam shook his shoulder, her hopes sank. She had seen enough dead men to recognize the signs.
    A couple of seconds later, she realized just how bizarre itwas for a retired schoolteacher to have such a thing go through her mind.
    That just went to show the kinds of unexpected turns her life had taken over the past few years.
    In the back of the carriage, the cheerleaders huddling around Clay Loomis were still crying and whimpering. They were safe now, but that knowledge hadn’t caught up with their terror. Loomis had stopped yelling, but he was still wide-eyed with shock.
    â€œStep back!” a man’s voice ordered. “Clear this area now!”
    Phyllis turned to see Chief of Police Ralph Whitmire, along with several of his officers, hurrying toward the carriage. Whitmire, a stocky, graying man and a good cop, stopped short as he recognized Phyllis and Sam.
    â€œOh, no,” he said. “What are you two doing here?”
    Although Whitmire had never demonstrated the level of hostility toward Phyllis that the local district attorney had, she knew he wasn’t happy about the way she seemed to turn up at so many crime scenes.
    Of course, this wasn’t really a crime scene—just a tragedy that could have been much worse. She was convinced that Barney McCrory had suffered a heart attack and died.
    â€œChief!” Clay Loomis piped up. Lingering fear gave his voice a high-pitched squeak. “Chief, we were almost killed!”
    â€œYou’re all right now, Mr. Loomis,” Whitmire assured him.
    Sam stepped down from the driver’s box and said, “Looks like Barney didn’t make it, Chief.”
    â€œWe’ll let the EMTs deal with that,” Whitmire said. He nodded toward an ambulance that was maneuvering through the crowd at little more than a crawl. The vehicle’s lights wereflashing, which washed out the more festive lights on the courthouse and the other buildings around the square.
    Phyllis knew the two young men, Calvin Holloway and Ted Brady, who got out of the ambulance when it came to a stop. They were friends of her son, Mike, who was a Parker County sheriff’s deputy.
    Tonight they wore dark blue Windbreakers with big letters on the back that read EMT . Phyllis couldn’t keep her mind from flashing back to a hot summer day several years earlier when Calvin and Ted had been summoned here to the courthouse square because of another death. She wasn’t likely to forget that time, since it was part of the first murder case with which she’d been involved.
    As the two of them hurried up, carrying handheld cases full of medical equipment and apparatus, Chief Whitmire told them, “Looks like a heart attack.”
    â€œAnybody else hurt that we need to check on first?” Ted asked.
    â€œNot that I’m aware of.” Whitmire put a hand on the edge of the carriage and asked Loomis and the cheerleaders, “Anybody hurt in there?”
    Several of the girls shook their heads, and two answered in shaky voices that they were all right. Loomis scrubbed a trembling hand over his face and said, “I’m not hurt, Chief, at least as far as I know right now.”
    Calvin and Ted climbed to the driver’s seat, one on each side of Barney McCrory, and began checking his vitals. Phyllis was pretty sure they would find that he didn’t have any.
    A