08 - December Dread Read Online Free Page A

bills?”
    She shrugged without stopping. “With your savings?”
    “Savings? I barely make above minimum wage. The city council voted to keep me at an assistant’s salary because I don’t have the librarian degree. You know that.”
    “Go home and visit your mom for the holidays, then, and be glad you have a job to return to,” she said as she sailed out the door.
    I watched her go, knowing I had no recourse. “Curse words.”
    Money was tight all over Minnesota, I knew that, and we’d all have to do our part. Yet, I’d thought I already was by accepting slave wages. I sighed. Go home, indeed. Kennie knew better. I couldn’t have escaped Paynesville any faster after I’d graduated high school if I’d had a jetpack strapped to my back. My dad had been the town drunk. One of them anyway. He’d gone out in a blaze of shame, killing himself and the two people in the other car in a head-on collision. I imagined his blood alcohol level must have been so high that he hadn’t felt a thing. At least, on my good days I did.
    I’d had to endure my junior and senior years of high school after my dad’s accident, during which time I became the town pariah, Manslaughter Mark’s daughter. Hunh. Guess death had marked me at a younger age than most. I spent those two years hurrying past the tin can wreck of his car, purchased as a cautionary example for the driver’s ed students. I grew wild and bitter pretty quickly, shunned by people I’d called friends, whispered about behind hands, judged wherever I turned.
    Once I’d graduated high school, I’d flown to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis without looking back. None of it had been my mom’s fault. She’d always been the quiet, consistent housewife and stable mother. Except, she also hadn’t left him, which I’d begged her to do for the year leading up to the accident, the year his drinking had really spiraled out of control. I had a hard time forgiving her for that. She’d visited me in the Cities a few times and even came up to Battle Lake in August. We’d been phoning each other regularly since then, rebuilding our relationship. I found I liked it, but at a distance. No way could I spend two weeks in a row with her, in the hometown I hadn’t seen in over a decade. I’d get the reverse-bends.
    As soon as lunchtime rolled around, I hoofed it over the snow-packed streets to the Battle Lake Recall office, a new plan percolating. Maybe Ron could give me more work during the lean times. It could help me to cover my heating, phone, and electric bills, keep me in groceries, and allow me to make the minimum payment on my school loans.
    The earthy smell of ink and paper greeted me when I entered the office. “Knock knock!” I hated when people said that when walking into a room. That just demonstrated my current level of stress.
    Ron grunted from behind the front counter where he was tapping away on a computer. He and his wife ran the paper. He was the editor, publisher, layout guy, and head writer. His second and current wife sold ad space, and together the two of them spent an inordinate amount of time making out in public. I’d come to terms with this tic of theirs but was always deeply grateful when I caught one without the other.
    “Nice to see you, too, Ron. You heard about the candy cane card scare in town?”
    “Not much of a scare,” he said, not glancing up from his iMac.
    “I don’t know about that.” I ran my hand across his counter. “Seems like there’s a story there, if someone wants to do some digging.”
    This earned me a look over the top of his bifocals. “Someone like you?”
    “I’m the only other reporter here, aren’t I?”
    He returned his focus to his computer screen, sliding a sheet of paper across the countertop.
    “What’s this?”
    “Read it.”
    I did, out loud. “Private Investigator Training. This 15-hour course covers all the necessary topics set out by Rule 7506.2300 and Minnesota Statute Chapter 326.23