Red Man Down--A Sarah Burke Police Procedural by Elizabeth Gunn

Author:Elizabeth Gunn [Elizabeth Gunn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

TEN

Funny how fast you establish a routine, Sarah thought Friday morning, as she opened the door to Tia Louisa’s housekeeping crew.

Sarah and her mother had agreed, when they moved in together, to pool money for a cleaning service, since Sarah’s time off was always conditional and Aggie’s stroke had bought her the Home Free pass from heavy housework. They’d established Friday as their day to take care of the house, so while the crew cleaned, Will caught a nap after his all-night shift, and Sarah dealt with the blizzard of laundry that cleaning created. Aggie, meanwhile, perched in a quiet spot, usually the patio, and made the week’s lists of needed supplies. After Will got up, the crew would clean the master bedroom last and then vacuum their way down the hall and out of the house.

This week Aggie said, ‘Why don’t you let the laundry wait a few days? No use carrying sheets around on your sore foot.’ But Sarah, after a few experimental steps, found that her toe joint seemed to be settling back into its accustomed groove and she could walk a few steps pretty comfortably now on two matching sandals. She set a stool by the folding table, kept the machines whirring and got the cleaning crew to ferry linens back and forth while she washed and folded.

Brain-dead labor needing little mental effort, her mind grew restless and soon wandered off on its own. When Tia Louisa brought the second load of sheets and took away the first stacks of folded towels, Sarah asked her to fetch a tablet and ballpoint from the drawer in the kitchen. Soon she had an almost perfect split going: the lizard brain to fold sheets and towels, the sentient portions to ponder the questions that had begun to cluster around Frank Martin’s suicide.

She emerged from this perfect circle once to find herself staring at the control panel on the washer while Tia Louisa asked her, looking a little worried, ‘Whatsa matter? You forget how to run the machine?’

Sarah explained that she had been thinking about something else. Louisa nodded, plainly suspecting that her employer had gone a little lame in more than her foot. But when Sarah limped back to the table and added another note on the bottom line of her growing list, she was wearing a small, satisfied smile.

By Monday morning, Sarah’s foot had given up the Northern Lights display and settled back to all-over ocher. It was still tender to the touch, though, so none of her shoes would work. Snow had fallen in downtown Tucson Saturday night and quickly melted Sunday morning, but the wind off the mountain had fangs and claws. She put on a pair of her thickest wool hiking socks and the Big Ugly Sandals, and stumped off to work.

She had an idea she wanted to peddle to her fellow detectives, and had made up her mind not to waste any more time thinking about her stupid foot. So as soon as she’d

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.