Drowning Barbie Read Online Free Page B

prompted it. The question is, do I really want to invite a leg cramp and pulled muscles wrestling with my wife in the backseat of a Buick?”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œJust think what we can tell our grandchildren.”
    â€œNow you are getting ahead of yourself. So, changing the subject—how was your day? Murder and mayhem?”
    â€œMurder, yes. Andy Lieux’s dog found a woman taking a dirt nap out in the woods and then when she was lifted out we found another corpse sharing the same twelve square feet of parkland. Two dead people separated by perhaps a decade and stacked, you could say, like cord wood. Not something you generally run across.”
    â€œTwo? Holy cow, Ike you are back on the job less than a week and people start dropping like flies. You are worse than the plague.”
    â€œWorse than?”
    â€œOkay, not worse. So, who are they?”
    â€œI don’t know much except the ME says the woman has been dead less than a week, the other corpse is male and has been there at least ten years. I doubt they’re connected but it did seem odd digging up one body and discovering it nestled on top of another.”
    â€œTwo dead people spooning in a grave but buried ten years apart?”
    â€œAbout ten, yes.”
    â€œMaybe they were husband and wife and she outlived him and her last wish was to be buried with the love of her life.”
    â€œHer head was bashed in. I doubt her killer had her last wishes in mind when he whacked her with a tree limb.”
    â€œYou never know. Okay, I will send my available dates and times to you, and you will set up something with The Reverend Fisher ASAP. We will go to Abe and Dolly’s for Sunday gorging and…Oh, I have it, we’ll invite my mother to join us and kill two birds with one turkey dinner.”
    â€œDon’t say kill. I’ve had a day full of that. Are you finished?”
    â€œDone. Pay the bill, Handsome, and then I’ll race you to the car. Where shall we park to play teenagers? The quarry or the dark end of the parking lot at Callend?”
    â€œIt’s Tuesday and a school night. The quarry will have fewer teenagers than the parking lot will have students.”
    â€œThe quarry it is. Wow, I really am behaving like a naughty school girl.”
    â€œMaybe you could put on a uniform. You know, plaid skirt, white blouse, bobby socks—”
    â€œBobby socks? What the hell are bobby socks?”
    â€œSorry, wrong century. It comes from watching too many old movies on TV. Short white socks.”
    â€œSorry, I left my school uniform at the cleaners. You’ll have to make do with my power suit and sensible flats. I’ll ditch my pantyhose in the ladies’ room on the way out.”

Chapter Five
    Ike plunked down in the only comfortable chair in his rented apartment. The two of them had driven to the quarry as planned and, like the teenagers they weren’t, had attempted some heavy petting in the front seat, not the back. It didn’t work. It didn’t work because, in fact, neither of them were teenagers anymore and hadn’t been for much too long. It didn’t work because the press of real work and duty distracted them from the moment, and because…hell, all those adult concerns push in and stifle whatever spontaneity they might have enjoyed. Ruth took care of him in a less athletic manner and he had driven her home. He had the sense that Ruth had more on her mind than just work, but Ruth was Ruth and she would work through it.
    He let his gaze wander around his apartment. Ruth had said “poor excuse of an apartment.” She was right, of course. He’d rented it when he had been elected sheriff. The drive into town from the mountains where he had his A-frame took too long to be convenient and was too tricky when the snow fell and iced the roads. The apartment’s two rooms, kitchenette, and bath had come furnished. In the intervening years he’d