The Nightingale Before Christmas by Donna Andrews

Author:Donna Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466850552
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Chapter 14

Was I imagining the footsteps? I stopped and bent down as if to adjust my boot fastening. I stole a look behind me. There was no one in the street. And I heard no footsteps nearby.

Yet when I walked on, I heard it again. My footsteps made just a little more noise than they should. And the noise varied ever so slightly, as if someone was walking behind me, taking a step every time I did, and almost—but not quite—disguising the sound of his footsteps.

I walked along at a slow saunter until I came to a corner. Then, instead of crossing the street as I’d originally planned, I ducked around the corner. Once I had a building to keep me out of sight of anyone following me, I sprinted till I came to an alley in the middle of the block. I ducked down the alley and hid behind some trash cans.

I waited there, peering out from behind the trash cans to the mouth of the alley.

It wasn’t my imagination. I could hear footsteps in the street I’d left. Soft footsteps approaching the mouth of the alley.

“Meg? Are you all right?”

I started, and whirled to find Muriel, owner of the diner, standing there with a full black plastic garbage bag in one hand. Not surprising, since this was the alley that ran behind the diner.

“You startled me,” I said, a lot more softly than Muriel had spoken. “I thought someone was following me.”

We both fell silent and listened while peering toward the end of the alley, but we didn’t hear anything. At least I didn’t, and after a few moments Muriel shook her head.

“You sure you’re not just feeling spooked?” she asked. “What with finding a body last night and all?”

“Could be.” I stood up and dusted my pants off. “Sorry if I startled you.”

“No problem,” she said. “Hey, just in case someone really was following you, how about if you walk me to my car and then I’ll drive you to yours?”

“It’s a deal,” I said.

She deposited her garbage bag in the Dumpster and locked the back door of the diner behind her.

When we got to the mouth of the alley, I paused to look up and down the street. No one visible. Plenty of places to hide.

But was there a reason someone had left a brick lying on the snow just outside the mouth of the alley?

“From the construction site three blocks over,” Muriel said, seeing me studying the brick.

“But what’s it doing here?” I asked.

She looked at the brick for a few long moments.

“My car’s this way,” she said.

I was glad when we reached her car, and even gladder that she waited until she’d seen me start my car and drive off.

But I hadn’t gone more than a few blocks before I began to suspect that a car was following me. A car with oddly distinctive headlights. Two sets of headlights, one on top of the other, with the bottom set slightly farther apart. And there

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