Double Shot Read Online Free

think about it.
So . . . now, in answer to Julian’s question” What was I going to do if Roger Mannis made an unexpected visit to this catered event . . . and saw all this spoiled food? I didn’t want to contemplate that, either.
“Goldy, are you all right?” Julian asked, startling me.
“Sure. Thanks for reminding me about the dear inspector,” I replied into the phone. “Let me see if Marla can waylay him.”
While Marla and I dumped the vats of slimy pasta, stinking salmon, and putrid spinach into plastic bags, I tried to think of a way to bring up the Mannis predicament. The apparent disappearance of the mice had soothed Marla’s nerves somewhat. Plus, she’d been eager to speculate about who could have done all this damage — although her considerable moneybags were still placed on the Jerk.
“He threatened you from prison,” she asserted as she lugged a trash bag to the Dumpster. “To your face and behind your back. To Arch, to his lawyer, to anyone who would listen. He read the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News every day, and when some guy got off for beating or killing his wife, he mailed the article to you, Goldy. For God’s sake!” She paused at the far end of the parking lot. “I suppose he’s making an appearance at the lunch?”
“Holly Kerr invited him,” I replied. “You remember Holly, don’t you? Albert’s wife, now widow? She wanted to include all the old gang from
Southwest
Hospital
.” I grunted as I heaved my bag over the lip of the Dumpster.
Marla groaned and clumsily tipped in her sack.   Frowned. Her beautiful pink-and-gold silk dress was stained with sweat and spotted with spoiled food. Dear Marla. And here I was doing to ask something else of her.
“Uh, girlfriend?”
Marla lifted her chin and shot me a wary look. Her brown curls had come askew from the sparkling barrettes, and perspiration streaked her face.
“Now what?”
“I’m sorry, but when the cops arrive, I need you to do one more thing.”
“It can’t be worse than this.”
“Would you be willing to go home,” I asked quickly, “take a nice shower, put on something really sexy, and find a county employee named Roger Mannis? I’ll give you his work number and address. Then distract him, seduce him, or do something to keep him occupied over the next few hours.”
“You mean Roger Mannis, the health inspector who hassled you at the garden-club lunch? The subject of Cecelia’s column, he of the muskrat eyes? One and the same?”
“Does that mean you’ll do it?” I asked as a sheriff’s-department vehicle finally, finally drove into the lot.
“You know what, Goldy?” Marla wiped her brow, glanced at the cop car, then put her hands on her hips. “If you weren’t my friend, I would have no excitement in my life.

<3>
She drove off, as they say in this part of the world, in a cloud of dust. The cop, a brawny blond fellow named Sawyer, had me repeat what had happened and show him the scene of the crime. He frowned at the place where I’d fallen, probed the splintered door frame with his finger, and narrowed his eyes at the bullet hole in the floor. He also told me I should see a doctor. I promised I would when the dust settled.
“Still, Mrs. Schulz, I’m going to stay here with you until your help arrives.”
“Feel like carrying some trash?”
His grin was expansive. “Sure.”
With Sawyer at my side, I hobbled back to the kitchen. The two of us grabbed the last of the trash bags — Sawyer insisted on taking three, so I only had one — traversed the lot, and heaved them into the Dumpster.
“I need you to show me the gun you used in the kitchen,” Officer Sawyer said mildly as we made our way back to the Roundhouse.
I veered toward the van, unlocked it, and flipped open the glove compartment. Then I unloaded the gun and handed it to him. He looked at it briefly before giving it back. His expression was inscrutable.
I put the thirty-eight into the glove compartment and slammed it shut. “My