Dutch Me Deadly Read Online Free

dysfunction section, I was pretty much on my own.
    Opting for the old standby, I flashed my ring finger at him. “Wouldn’t you know? I’m married.”
    He flashed his ring finger back at me. “So am I married. Four times. So what?”
    Hmm. How could I explain monogamy to a serial adulterer in terms he wouldn’t find insulting? I mean, I had to interact with this guy for the next eight days, so I had to be careful not to generate any bad blood. If he turned out to be the vengeful type, he could break more bones with his bus than I could with my shoulder bag.
    I offered him a perky smile. “Sooo … I don’t think so, but thanks so much for asking.” Scooting around the bus, I darted across the highway and onto the narrow sidewalk, falling in line behind the other guests who were making the short trek to the windmill.
    Abutting the pedestrian walk was a low concrete barrier that was supposed to prevent people from falling into the canal on the opposite side, but if this was the Dutch idea of a barrier, I imagined that swimming might soon overtake skating as Holland’s favorite national sport. The windmill, a spectacular hexagonal structure with four open-grid sails that resembled giant propeller blades, was perched at the foot of the canal, surrounded by open field. The lower third of the building was sided with clapboards painted a dazzling emerald green. The upper two-thirds was overlaid with thatching so meticulously trimmed, it looked as if the building were wearing a mohair sweater.
    As I scrambled to keep up, a man wearing a Bar Harbor, Maine jacket broke away from the group and ambled into the middle of the street, where he got to enjoy an unobstructed view of the windmill without the clutter of heads in front of him.
    Uh-oh. This wasn’t good.
    Our bucolic ambience was suddenly ripped apart by the shrill blast of a whistle. “Get out of the street!” Charlotte screamed, charging into the street, arms flailing. She punished him with another earsplitting blast. “I told you to stay on the sidewalk! Are you deaf ?”
    If he wasn’t before, he sure was now.
    She steamrolled toward him, her expression promising a calamitous confrontation. “I said move! Do you have a death wish?”
    Making no attempt to move, the man snapped a picture of the windmill before locking his sights on Charlotte, skewering her with a look so surly, it stopped her dead in her tracks.
    She swayed on her heels like an off-balance Weeble wobbling back to vertical, then screwed her face into an indignant contortion that promised instant reprisal. Eyes throwing daggers at him, she stuck her whistle back in her mouth and blew with the explosive power borne of a pair of lungs bursting with hot air.
    The whistle shot out of her mouth and skidded onto the street like a skipped rock, bouncing crazily over the pavement until it came to rest at the man’s feet.
    Wow. Charlotte might not look like a guy, but she could sure spit like one.
    The man snatched it off the ground, hefted it in his palm, and with a self-satisfied glint in his eye, hurled it unceremoniously into the canal.
    “My whistle!” Charlotte cried. “You’re going to replace that, mister!”
    He strode past her, leaving her red-faced and fuming as he stepped onto the sidewalk in front of me.
    “You—I swear you people are going to be the death of me!” she ranted. “If you refuse to obey the rules, there will be conseque—”
    She would have continued had a motorcycle not roared down the street at just that moment, seemingly hot to lay rubber down the length of her spine. With a terrified shriek she leaped out of the way, making a megaphone of her hands to yell after him: “Maniac! You should have your license revoked! You’re a threat to all mankind! I hope you get arrested for noise pollution!”
    “Cussed nuisance,” grumbled the guy in the Bar Harbor jacket, giving no indication which nuisance he found more irritating, the motorcyclist or Charlotte.
    “My group is