Uncommon Grounds Read Online Free

cupboard, coffee grinder in hand. “She wasn’t feeling well, so I took her home.” I put the grinder down. “What did the medical examiner say?”
    He rubbed his eyes. “Exactly what I thought he’d say. Cardiac arrest.”
    “From what?”
    He pushed back from the table, crossing his left foot over his right knee. “Electrocution, apparently, though we’ll know for sure after the autopsy. I think the current either stopped her heart outright or put it into fibrillation. Either way, with no one there to pull her away from the machine or to force her heart into a normal rhythm, she died.”
    With no one there...
    Maybe if I had arrived on time, Patricia would still be alive. “How long had she been there, do you think?”
    “At least a half hour. Probably longer. Her pupils were dilated and non-reactive.”
    I was thinking about the half hour I’d been late. The half hour Patricia had probably been dead.
    Gary read my face. “Don’t hit yourself over the head with it, Maggy. You likely couldn’t have done anything, even if you had found her earlier. Or you could have been electrocuted yourself. She was probably frozen to—” He stopped when he saw my face.
    “The espresso machine,” I finished for him. “But how could that happen?”
    He shook his head and picked up the notebook and pen. “You tell me. When did you get it?”
    I explained about the installation on Thursday and the practice sessions on Friday. Gary took notes.
    “Could it have been an electrical surge or something?” I asked.
    He shook his head. “The whole machine was still live when we got there. When I saw Patricia’s hand, and the scorch mark on the sink, I suspected electrocution immediately. That’s why I wouldn’t let you touch it.”
    I didn’t know what to say. Gary shifted in his chair. “Anyway, they threw the breaker and are getting ready to take apart the machine. Do you have a schematic? It would give them something to work from.”
    “There’s one in the office.”
    “Good.” He flipped to a fresh page of the notebook. “Now tell me about this morning.”
    I gave up on the coffee and sat down at the table across from him. “I was running late. My alarm went off at five-thirty, instead of five. We were supposed to be at the store by five-thirty so we would have plenty of time to brew coffee and set up before we opened at six-thirty. If I had been there—”
    Gary gave me a stern look. “Don’t start that again. Maybe this was meant to be. Maybe you were meant to oversleep, because it wasn’t your time. Now, when did you actually arrive?”
    But it was Patricia’s time? I answered Gary’s question. “It was almost six. I ran in and—”
    “Was the door locked?”
    I shook my head. “Caron or Patricia must have left it unlocked when they came in.”
    “So Caron was already there?”
    I nodded. “She still had her coat on and was staring at Patricia on the floor. I started CPR, and Caron called 911.”
    “Is that it?” Gary asked, flipping his notebook closed and starting to stand up.
    I nodded, surprised at his abruptness. “Do you want me to come back with you and find the schematic?”
    “I have to talk to Caron, then stop at the station.” He hesitated. “Actually, maybe you could go to the store and dig out the schematic in the meantime.”
    He got all the way to the door before he turned around. “One thing you should know, though. When the county medical examiner got the call, he saw who the victim was and called Jake Pavlik, the new county sheriff. The Harpers are important people, and the bureaucrats don’t want anything to...slip through the cracks.” He seemed to be quoting.
    “Slip through the cracks?” I got angry, since Gary was too well-mannered to do it for himself. I like to think of myself as an advocate for those less bitchy. “You’ve protected presidents, for God’s sake.”
    Gary shook his head. “Nobody cares about what I did ten years ago. To them I’m just a