Cancelled by Murder Read Online Free Page B

its idiosyncrasies better than I did. She poured servings of hearty soup into two bowls, carried them to my kitchen table, took a seat, and indicated that I should do the same.
    I motioned toward my clock. Five fifteen. “Is this a late lunch or an early dinner?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t know about you, but for me, it’s the rest of my breakfast.”
    Her first words since she took over my stove. She looked as though she’d been out in the storm, from its beginning to its near end, which was promised to be within the hour.
    She retreated to silence for a few spoonfuls of hot soup. “I have something to tell you,” she said.
    I looked at her bedraggled body, her face that had been somber since her arrival. I should have known. I wasn’t just a convenient place to prepare her meal, though that happened before and would have been enough for me to welcome her. She could have stopped a few blocks from here and used the microwave in her own break room at the police station.
    I felt my stomach clutch, every muscle tense. “It’s about the casualty.”
    She nodded.
    I ran through the possibilities, grateful to be able to eliminate a few key people—Ben, Sunni herself, and my traveling boyfriend—as potential victims.
    â€œDaisy,” she said in a near whisper, her head bent over her bowl.
    I let my spoon bounce into my bowl, splattering the table with globs of soup. “Daisy Harmon?” I asked, as if there were another Daisy in our circle. “I just saw her. I waved to her on my way home.”
    That ought to do it. That should clear things up. Daisy couldn’t be dead.

3
    I t wasn’t the first time I’d tried to bring someone back to life simply by willing it to be so. The first time was at the news of my parents’ death in a car crash. This time it was a friend who, like my parents, I’d assumed would be around for a long time. How wrong could I be? How often?
    â€œDaisy Harmon died in the storm,” Sunni said, from another world. “I just talked to Cliff. He’s been at some kind of training program for private security forces in Springfield.”
    Daisy’s husband. “He’s supposed to be across the street.” He was supposed to be on hand to help her, was what I meant.
    Sunni gave me a strange look, perhaps the first eye contact she’d made. I saw her gaze wander toward my living room and out the door. I realized she was trying to focus on my reference to “across the street.”
    â€œI mean when I saw her on my way home, once I closed up. I figured Cliff must be at the school across from her shop.”
    She shook her head. “He’s been out of town since Wednesday. He drove back after I called him, and got here a couple of hours ago. Her parents are in Florida, and except for some cousins in the Midwest, she has no other relatives.”
    â€œCliff must be devastated.”
    â€œNo one’s prepared for something like this.”
    I couldn’t get my last image of Daisy out of my mind. I wished she’d waved back at me. Foolish thought. She’d been in front of her shop, alive, not long after noon when I drove by. Then she was dead. How could that be?
    â€œWhen did it happen?” I asked.
    â€œAround one thirty. Tony found her.”
    â€œBike shop Tony?”
    â€œYeah, the young guy, going to school at night. He went out back to drag the trash barrels into the little covered area and he saw a branch of the tree on Daisy’s property was down. He thought he heard activity, so he yelled over, and”—Sunni picked at a twig of grapes from a bowl on my table—“when she didn’t answer, he hoisted himself on the fence and saw her under the branch, and ran down the alley to the street and then up the other alley into her backyard. When he got there she was dead. Tony thinks if he could have climbed the fence, he might have saved her. But there’s no