Hanging by a Thread Read Online Free Page B

was a lot of things—an artist, a gardener, a cook, a planet-saver—but I’d never known her to get involved in other people’s business.
    “Yes,” she said, and stared out the window, her eyes filled with regret.
    “What?” I demanded. “What happened?”
    “That’s not a story for today,” Nana said, suddenly sounding tired. “Actually, that’s not a story for me to tell at all.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    R ACHEL WAITED UNTIL THE WOMAN who had bought the tote bag was out of earshot before holding her hands up above her head and making the victory sign.
    “Hoff run,” she said in a singsong voice. I grimaced, but there would be no getting out of it. I’d lost the bet, fair and square.
    “Hoff run” was short for “Hasselhoff run,” which in turn was our nickname for the cost of doing business here in front of the Shuckster. The casual seafood restaurant and bar hadn’t been our first choice as a location to set up shop. It hadn’t been our second, either, or our third, fourth, tenth, or twenty-second. No. The Shuckster was dead last on our list of the twenty-three merchants on either Beach Road or Shore Street, which made up the entire downtown business district of Winston, California.
    The Chamber of Commerce website said that the local population of 2,100 swelled by thousands because of tourists every summer, but I was pretty sure they hadn’t updatedthe site since the murders. I had checked the website to find out if it really was true that hawking merchandise without a license was punishable by jail time. We were told this once by the cranky, chain-smoking man who owned Seaside T’s and Gifts when he told us to get lost. It wasn’t—but there
was
a town ordinance and a fine of $250, a fact that was confirmed by the cop who stopped us as we came out of Earl’s Old-Tyme Barber Shoppe after having been turned down yet again for our request to set up shop out front.
    “But what you
could
do,” the cop said as he stared at Rachel’s bikini top, “is if you could find someone to sponsor you, and if you stayed on their property, well, I doubt we’d have a problem with that.”
    Sounded good to us, except that turned out to be an even harder sell to the merchants of picturesque Winston. With business down already, they didn’t want to do anything that might put off potential customers.
    Until we got to the Shuckster. As we’d climbed the steps to the broad wooden porch that day two weeks earlier, Rachel had put a hand on my arm to stop me. “Wait,” she’d said, chewing her gum fiercely. Rachel might have looked like a Victoria’s Secret model, but she could be surprisingly clever, so I waited patiently for her to think through whatever she was scheming.
    “So here’s the deal,” she said after a moment. “The guy who used to own the Shuckster—Mr. Price? He’s like a hundred. His son runs it now. He’s a
major
creeper. I mean, he’ll probably let us set up here, but he’s a huge lech.”She shrugged. “I just want you to know what you’re getting into.”
    I looked through the open door into the dim interior of the restaurant. I couldn’t see much inside, other than a few neon beer signs and the bar itself, quiet now during the afternoon lull between the lunch and dinner rushes.
    “So you’re saying … I have to let him grab my ass if we want to set up here?”
    “No, not at all. Just that you’re going to have to stay on your toes. Oh, and Cee-Cee? He looks just like the Hoff.”
    “The who?”
    “Hasselhoff. David Hasselhoff? You know, the disgusting guy from TV? He was on
Dancing with the Stars
a few years ago?”
    And Mason Chase did resemble a young Hoff, with masses of messy brown hair and a leering grin and baggy, wrinkled surfer clothes. I figured he was about thirty years old, but you got the feeling he’d done enough partying for a lifetime. When he shook my hand, his eyes lingered on my body, and as he listened to our business proposal, he actually winked at me.
    But