Artful Dodger (Maggie Kean Mis-Adventures) Read Online Free Page A

sent me a lazy salute before turning and walking away.

    “Why would he want to talk with you, Maggie?”
    I remained on the porch.  Without Villari’s height advantage, I was as close to Preston as I wanted to be. The little weasel gave me the creeps.
     “Gee, it’s hard to imagine. I wonder if it could have anything to do with a dead body that showed up in my yard?”
    “You always were such a smartass. I never could understand what Grandmother saw in you.”
    “And I never could understand how you could be carrying her genes.” The little runt had a big mouth and nothing to back it up. His nasty demeanor didn’t intimidate me, but it angered me enough to throw diplomacy to the wind. Marching down the steps, I stopped in front of Preston and poked my finger in his chest. “Listen, you little twerp. Why don’t you cooperate with the police so they can find out who did this to your grandmother? Try dropping the haughty attitude for a change. You might discover that people don’t find you nearly as repulsive as they do now." 
    "I don't give a damn what people think about me," he sneered, grabbing my arm as I started past him.
    I stopped. “Sure you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t work so hard at trying to make them hate you.”
    He tightened his grip. “You’re going to psychoanalyze me?” he asked incredulously.
    “I don’t have the time or the interest, Preston. Right now I have a friend to mourn.” Emotions I couldn’t read flitted across his face. I stared straight into his eyes without flinching until he released his grip. I headed across the yard, taking a wide turn around the septic tank, which was still open and surrounded by cops. Apparently they had grown accustomed to the stench. The gravel driveway crunched under my feet as I passed a few feet behind Detective Villari. He was talking to the serviceman, the same one who had found my neighbor this morning.
    “Didn’t notice anything,” I heard him say. Villari jotted a few notes down and asked something I couldn’t hear. The guy in the striped shirt shook his head.
    “Nope. It was my first appointment.”
    Not wanting to hear any more, I hurried past and followed the sidewalk toward what I called my backyard. A crooked row of shrubbery, trees and scrub oak separated the front section of my property, where my house stood, from that of my neighbor, but the back was wide open. Elizabeth Boyer had requested that it be kept that way. All the previous occupants agreed, as I did, and the land was left alone, unmarred by rock, brick, or barbed-wire fences. It was left as nature intended, wild and spacious, overflowing with ponderosa pines and blue spruce trees. I liked having a private forest behind my house and took long walks following a narrow trail whenever I could get away. I was headed there now, looking forward to the cool shade and fresh pine scent, when my stomach lurched at the very loud, very familiar sound.  It was the slam of expensive brakes and the pings of little rocks ricocheting off the underbelly of a car as it fishtailed on the gravel road. I didn’t have to look back to know who it was.
    “Maggie!”
    “As if Preston wasn’t bad enough, Queen Bee just arrived,” I muttered, picking up speed until I was practically jogging toward the back forest. The last thing I wanted was a scene. Cassandra Boyer was the antithesis of her brother. She inherited all the looks in the family and all the dramatic flair. If she wanted something, she went after it, even if it meant parking her car in the midst of thirty or more cops milling around a taped-off crime scene. Cassandra ignored the whole bunch of them to pursue me with a vengeance.
    “Maggie! Maggie! Wait up!”
    Power-walking now, I ignored her calls. I figured I’d be safe just beyond the row of pines that stood up ahead like three unadorned Christmas trees. A few steps past them was a sharp incline that would protect me like a shroud against unwanted visitors, especially those