Dear Killer (Marley Clark Mysteries) Read Online Free Page A

drive stakes through their puny
hairless chests. They smash mailboxes with ball bats, throw lawn furniture in
pools, and mark their territory with beer cans and urine. It’s gotten worse
lately. Now they’re terrorizing elderly residents too afraid to complain.”
    “Wonder what they were doing here,” Braden said.
    “Nothing good.”
    I glanced toward the Jacuzzi. The yellow caution tape had
vanished—along with Stew, of course, and the vegetable potpourri. An “Out of
Order” sign leaned against the dial for the hot tub’s jets.
    “If I hadn’t been here, I’d never believe someone was
murdered.”
    Braden shrugged. “Sheriff Conroy pushed to finish all
on-site forensic work before daybreak. The last crew left at six a.m. Dear’s developer must have political juice. Called in favors with SLED—the South Carolina
Law Enforcement Division. He didn’t want any grisly reminders of murder
greeting guests this morning.”
    For the next half hour, we wandered the grounds and peered
into every clubhouse portal. We circled the baby pool, where a hollow
see-through whale made tykes long to be swallowed by a giant fish. Then we
meandered among the fake outcroppings and caves crafted to make the freeform
pools and fountains appear part of a natural paradise. While the
plaster-of-Paris sculptures didn’t quite achieve the intended ambiance, the
hidden misters were a hit with children, who never failed to spy pirates
lurking in the artificial fog.
    Today the haze whispered against my skin like a gray shroud.
I kept glancing behind me, expecting something more lethal to materialize out
of the cave’s dank reaches. At the cavern’s exit, the deputy stopped short. I
walked right up his heels, ricocheted and wound up on my rump. Braden managed a
more graceful gymnast’s landing and sprang upright. He reached down and hauled
me up with ease.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    “Yeah.” I dusted off my rump. How embarrassing. “Sorry.”
    “Don’t be. Can’t remember the last time a woman fell for
me.”
    His sly smile and lifted eyebrow made me blush. Did he think
I planned my little trip?
    “Glad you have a sense of humor. The last guy who landed at
my feet threatened to sue.”
    “He must have been crazy.” Braden reached over and tugged
gently on one of my curls. “A piece of moss.” He showed me the speck of furry
green he’d extracted.
    A light-headed moment ensued. Jeez. Was he flirting? How did
you tell?
    I’d been a chunky teen, shy around boys. The years most
girls spent learning to flirt, I’d aced advanced placement classes, played
clarinet in the marching band, and won the Iowa State debate championships. I
hadn’t exactly flunked flirting, just never matriculated in how-to-date school.
Once basic training rendered my baby fat to muscle, who needed to flirt? The
Army’s male-to-female ratio erased any deficiency.
    Braden pointed toward the Jacuzzi. “The murderer could have
stood inside this overhang and been invisible,” he said. “There’s a direct line
of sight. I did a little research last night. In Russia and some East European
countries, police use stunners that can be fired twenty feet from the target,
and there’s no telltale confetti. It’s possible our victim never saw his
killer.”
    I frowned. “Stew may not have seen his killer, but my bet is
he knew him. I can’t imagine Stew skinny-dipping alone. Probably meeting
someone—the ‘someone’ who murdered him. Otherwise, we’d have two dead bodies or
a hysterical witness. He knew his killer.”
    “You have a candidate?”
    “No. Stew’s life seemed pretty dull.” I shared the scarce
details that circulated the island about the man’s job, occasional dates, and
his golf and fishing hobbies.
    When Braden questioned me, I named the women Stew
occasionally squired, but couldn’t come up with a single male confidante. He’d
been friendly with everyone, good friends with no one. If it weren’t for my
neighbor, Janie Spark, I