2 On the Nickel Read Online Free Page B

with a clear view of the church back yard. The
thicket was the ultimate place to spy on the church ladies who hid Easter eggs.
    I led the way through the narrow
kid-sized passageway, swatting drooping branches and taut spider webs away from
my face. A large black spider dangled in front of my face, and I choked back a
scream.
    “Are we there yet?” Jonette
whispered in my ear.
    “Shh,” I cautioned. “Britt will
skin us alive if he finds out we’re spying on him.”
    My nerves wouldn’t settle. If
anything, they were worse back here. My numb fingers and toes barely worked. If
Jonette told anyone how crazy I was, I’d deny it with every breath in me.
    When there was only one row of
bushes between me and the Trinity grounds proper, I raised a hand to halt our
forward progress.
    Jonette squatted beside me, her amber-flecked eyes sparkling with excitement. I rationalized our position. We weren’t
being nosy. We were gathering information. Perfectly logical.
    I parted the branches, and the
church lot came into view. A knot of police officers stood twenty feet away.
Their grim faces and hushed voices added to my unease. The entire parking lot
was decked out with yellow police tape.
    Oh no.
    Crime-scene tape.
    They didn’t put that up for
fender benders. My investigative nausea had been right on target. A crime had been committed back here. But what crime?
    This area was off limits. It
would look bad if we got caught. So we wouldn’t get caught.
    I studied the length of the
parking lot. No wrecked cars in sight. There was, however, a heavily draped
mound just off the pavement near the paved back loop. With this many cops
called to the premises, that had to be a body under the tarp.
    Not another one.
    “Oh God,” I said under my breath.
My heart stilled as memories of finding Dudley Davis dead on the golf course
flashed through my head. Sightless eyes, rigid limbs, dark bloodstains, and an
odor that stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t need to see another dead body. I
still had nightmares from the last one.
    “What? Let me see.” Jonette
pushed past me for a better view, throwing me off balance and sending me sprawling through the bushes onto the gravel covering this overflow section of the parking
lot. Dismay choked the breath out of me as I flew through the air.
    This was going to hurt.
    My arms, which I instinctively
raised in protection, scraped along the sharp, spiky edges of the trimmed branches as I sailed through the vegetative cover. Gravel rocks sliced my face, arms, and
knees. My teeth crunched the gritty gravel dust. I tried to scramble back to
safety, but I wasn’t fast enough.
    A uniformed officer detained me. Officer Eddie Wagner. I’d babysat for him twenty years ago. Below his mirrored sunglasses,
his lips pressed into a thin line. He hoisted me to my feet and clamped my
hands behind my back. “Detective Radcliffe,” he said. “A present for you.”
    It felt like I was standing on
roller skates, my knees were trembling so badly. Looking down, I discovered my
navy shorts had split from mid hip to hem on the right seam during my fall.
Lacy black underpants were visible, along with a swath of blinding white skin
that the sun never saw.
    Mortification lit my cheeks.
    This couldn’t be happening to me.
    I was a sensible woman.
    A pillar of the community.
    I did not wear black undies as a
rule, and I never flashed my privates in public. I was a good role model for my
kids.
    I don’t know who groaned the
loudest, me or Britt Radcliffe.
    Britt stared into the woods. “Come out of there, Jonette, or I’m coming in after you.”
    Jonette squirmed through the hole I’d made. She shot me a wry smile. “Oops.”
    Oops indeed.
    My jaw clenched. Oops was for
dropping a penny when you counted out change at the supermarket. Oops was for
putting a run in your stockings. Oops didn’t cover falling into an area
crawling with cops.
    “What the hell are you two doing
in my accident scene?” Britt asked.
    Air