10 - Trap Door by Sarah Graves

Author:Sarah Graves [Door, Trap]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

One she could hide in if she wanted to. “And… did any of them say why she was moving?”

“They said she was scared but she wouldn’t say of what, only that she and the baby weren’t safe here.”

“I guess not,” I said. But how had Trish known? A car pulled out from the curb behind us, one of those anonymous small white rentals you can get at most any airport and lots of other places, too. It bore a Maine license plate but I couldn’t quite see the driver.

“I asked if Trish ever left the baby with any of them,” Ellie said. “Or with anyone else.”

I took my eyes off the car in the rearview long enough to grin at her. “You genius. Like maybe the night Cory died?”

Because I was sure now that if he’d been murdered, Henderson had done it. Call me crazy, but the combination of a dead guy and a known killer with a grudge against the victim was just too much of a coincidence for my taste.

But that didn’t mean I’d ignore other theories. To nail Walt Henderson the way I needed to do it, they all had to be ruled out.

“Yup,” said Ellie. “But Trish was home that night, they said. Most other nights, too.”

The white car stayed behind us. “It was their one negative comment,” Ellie went on. “That she was picky about taking care of the baby. They said she made them feel she didn’t think they were good enough.”

It was past midafternoon and the sun’s glare kept me from seeing into our tail-car’s passenger compartment. I couldn’t tell if it was the one that had nearly run me over the night before, either. I put my signal on, swung a fast U-turn in the middle of St. Stephen’s downtown traffic; no cop around, luckily.

Or unluckily, depending on how this turned out. “There was one other thing,” Ellie said, taking a cue from my body language and glancing in the mirror herself. “They said the police were there for a long time at the fire. Everybody got out safe,” she added, “but it was close.”

“And?” Once we left the downtown area the city thinned to a couple of shopping malls, fast-food joints, some car dealerships, and a garden center. After that it was an hour and a half or so through the hinterlands until the city of St. John.

Too far to go today. “And,” Ellie replied, “the women said the fire in Trish’s building was definitely arson.”

I frowned, peeking at the rearview again. “Oh, come on. How would they know? It would take days for an investigation, and… ”

Ellie shook her head as I put on my signal, waited for a chance in the oncoming traffic, and turned left into the parking lot of a veterinarian’s office. A lady with a Great Dane in the passenger seat of her VW bug gave me a dirty look, then pulled out.

“That’s what I thought. But one of those moms lives right next door to the burned building,” Ellie replied.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.