Murder Comes by Mail Read Online Free Page A

stopped in front of the entrance. “I’ll walk you around to the back door.” He turned the key off and reached for the door handle.
    “No need in that.” Aunt Lindy gathered up her purse.
    Aunt Lindy lived in three rooms in the back, while she let the ghosts of Keanes past haunt the rest of the house undisturbed. Once a year she flung open the heavy doors into the front rooms to decorate for the ghosts and all of Hidden Springs to come to a Christmas tea. It was a Keane tradition.
    That was where Michael used to imagine he would get married. In that huge front parlor at Christmastime. He could see himself in a black tux and a woman in a lacy gown beside him with the eight-foot tree sparkling beside them.
    Then, when he was a mere lovesick teenager, it had been Alex wearing the white wedding gown. Even now, he could see no one else there beside him, but he had a hard time believing Alex would ever be ready to share that wedding dream.
    Alex Sheridan was on the fast track, an attorney in DC with clients whose names made headlines. She thought Michael should be on a fast track somewhere too, instead of poking along here in Hidden Springs. The idea of Alex settling down in Hidden Springs was too ludicrous to even consider, and the idea of him in DC was worse than ludicrous. It was terrifying.
    For a while last year Alex actually made sounds of coming to Hidden Springs and letting her uncle add a Sheridan to the Sheridan on the shingle in front of his lawyer’s office on Main Street. Then Reese Sheridan’s health had improved and one of Alex’s big-name clients got embroiled in some sort of meaty scandal in DC. Michael hadn’t seen her since, except for a brief appearance at Aunt Lindy’s open house last Christmas. Alex had zoomed in and out that day. They hadn’t even had time for a good argument.
    Now Michael hurried around to help Aunt Lindy out of his old truck. He walked her up the porch steps to the door with its etched glass panels. No light shone from inside. “You should leave a light on in the front hall.”
    “Why would I do that? I have never been afraid of the dark.”
    “It’s not the dark. It’s what’s in the dark.”
    “There’s nothing in the dark but my house. Our house.” She fished her key out of her purse. “I’ve been locking my door if that makes you feel any better, although I can’t imagine anybody bothering me here.”
    “Probably not, but some kid might think it was funny to try to scare you.”
    “If you mean one of my students, I sincerely doubt that ever happening. They would know better.” She turned the key, pushed the door open enough to reach inside, and flipped on the porch light.
    “Even one you give a bad grade?” Michael teased her.
    “They get the grades they earn. I don’t give them anything.” She peered up at him with narrowed eyes. “If you’re trying to get a rise out of me, you should know better too.”
    “Right. Sorry, Aunt Lindy.” Michael touched her shoulder to stop her before she went inside. “And don’t worry about Julie Lynne. She’ll never come to Hidden Springs.”
    “You could be wrong there. She might very well show up here, but who said I was worried? I know you’ll do the right thing. You always do.” She reached up to lay her hand on his cheek. “I’m proud of the way you saved that man out on the bridge. It could have so easily gone the other way.”
    “It was just routine. I did what any other police officer would have done.”
    “You kept him from jumping.”
    “I didn’t keep him from wanting to.”
    She frowned a little. “Wonder what would bring a man to such a state?”
    “Who knows?” Michael shrugged. “Money trouble, drugs, women. Depression. It could be anything.”
    “Your grandfather always said every man has his demons. The successful man is he who learns to control his.”
    “I think this guy needed crowd control.” He remembered the look on the man’s face as he lay on the road staring up at