Who Left That Body in the Rain? by Patricia Sprinkle

Author:Patricia Sprinkle [Sprinkle, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780451207586
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Thomas T Beeler
Published: 2001-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

I read with Joe Riddley peering over my shoulder. “She got that right.” He pointed at she will get herself killed, too, one day.

I felt proud and embarrassed all at the same time, but I had to tell the truth. “Honey, this is real exaggerated.” I handed back the paper. “I mean, I’ve helped the police with a few cases—”

“—and nearly got herself killed,” Joe Riddley added sourly.

“Sic ’em. Sic ’em,” Joe advised.

Rosa put the paper back in her purse. “I don’t know who else to turn to. When we came back from church this afternoon, the police came to our house and took my father down to the station. They asked him all sorts of questions, and while they let him come home afterwards, he thinks they believe he killed Mr. MacDonald.”

Joe Riddley wasn’t as good as he used to be at keeping important confidences. “Chief Muggins mentioned that this afternoon.”

Rosa leaned toward me, an urgent look in her dark eyes. “You don’t believe that, do you? What reason would he have? He didn’t even know the man. Besides, everyone says Mr. MacDonald was killed Friday evening, and Papi was at the restaurant until nearly two, cleaning up and closing out the register. Then we went home exhausted and fell into bed. But even if he was out and about for a little while, my father would never kill a man.”

I stirred my cocoa and gave her a thoughtful look. “I understand, though, that he was making threats to ‘kill that MacDonald if he lays a hand on my little girl.’ ”

She lowered her gaze to the tabletop. “That was just wild talk. It was all my fault. I should never have told him—”

She paused so long that Joe Riddley got curious. “Told him what?”

A soft pink rose in her cheeks. “Papi is very old-fashioned. He doesn’t think a man should ask a woman to dinner before he has met her parents.”

I was dumbfounded. “Skye asked you to dinner?”

She wrinkled her forehead. “I thought his name was Skeleton.” She gave a delicate shudder. “What kind of mother would name her son that?”

Relief would have buckled my knees if I hadn’t been already sitting. “You mean Skell? His name is Skellton, with two l’s and one e, S-k-e-l-l-t-o-n. It was his mother’s maiden name.”

“Kids tried to call him ‘Bones’ in school,” Joe Riddley acknowledged, “but Laura beat the tar out of them.”

“Oh.” She sounded thoughtful and more than a little relieved.

To my surprise, Joe Riddley was the one who got us back on track. The way his mind had been working for the past six months, it could have wandered off in four other directions. Instead, he said, “Skell’s been asking her to dinner. What about that, Little Bit?”

I knew why he sounded so pleased. The girl Skell had hoped to marry after college had decided she’d rather join the peace corps, and it broke his heart. Folks in Hopemore had shoved every eligible girl we knew his way since then, but he’d never done more than be polite to them at parties.

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