Something to Crow About: Another P.J. Benson Mystery by Maris Soule

Author:Maris Soule [Soule, Maris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: First Tier
Published: 2021-02-09T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Yes,” I once again repeated to Wade. “The baby and I are fine. She’s acting as she always does, poking her fists and feet into my sides” I was being bruised internally as well as externally. “And no, I don’t think the blood on the rock came from when Baraka cut his pad. It was fresh when I first saw it.”

I’d called Wade as soon as I’d taken off my muddied boots, jeans and jacket and checked to see if anything downstairs had been taken. TV, computer, Xbox—all the valuable items a burglar might steal were untouched. As far as I could tell, my purse hadn’t been touched. My wallet, credit cards, even the envelope with what was left of the money the Sporbachs had given me was still there, and the loose change that Wade dropped into a cup on the dresser was at the same level as I remembered.

I leaned my cell phone against that cup of change and kept talking as I slipped on a clean pair of maternity jeans. “I think he swore because Baraka bit him.”

The jeans, with their maternity insert, had seemed ridiculously oversized when I first purchased them. Now I could barely get the pants around my middle. “Yes,” I continued as I cinched the tie-strings. “I was careful. I put gloves on before I picked it up, and I put it in a paper bag.” Exactly as he’d explained wet evidence such as blood should be handled and packaged.

“I’m sure it was one of the men from the furniture store. The short one. They didn’t want me to buy the rocking chair. Kept giving me reasons why I couldn’t have it. I think Miguel came here to get it back. But he wasn’t carrying it when I saw him. You did take it out of the car, didn’t you?”

When he assured me he had, I asked the next logical question. “Did you put it upstairs?”

His answer surprised me. “The woodshed?”

Clothes changed, I slipped on my shoes. “Okay, I’m going to go look.”

I didn’t bother with a jacket, simply went down the back steps and over to the shed where wood was stored to fuel our wood-burning fireplace during the winter. Most of the wood was now gone, and it only took me a moment to spot the rocking chair on a shelf along the back wall.

“It’s there,” I told Wade and shivered, the cold air making me wish I had grabbed a jacket. “Why did you put it in here? And up on a shelf?”

Wade’s explanation that since our daughter wouldn’t be using the rocking chair for a while and it would be safer up off the dirt floor made sense, so I decided I would leave it where it was. “If I’m right and he was after the rocking chair, I don’t think he thought about looking in there,” I said and headed back into the house. “And, if he wasn’t after it, I have no idea what he was looking for.

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