Edited for Death Read Online Free

Explorer worked on, the coffee shop, the weekly newspaper office and the Recorder’s office. He rallied Search and Rescue.
    His teams combed the cabin and the surrounding clearing for several hours and didn’t turn up a thing that hadn’t spent the winter lying under several feet of snow.
    Heading back down the hill, Dodson tells Clarice, the Search and Rescue Jeep was parked on the right-hand side of the road, pulled to the edge of a steep drop off. Janice’s Explorer had flipped over and wedged between two trees.
    “We spent better than two hours going over the spot for forensics and came up with nothing; no skid marks, no brake marks. It looked as though she’d just calmly, quietly driven off the edge, into the void,” he tells Clarice.
    “But I know there’s more to this,” Clarice has an ah-ha in her voice as she tells me the story.
    “Just let it go, Clarice. There are accidents every year on those mountain roads. You’ve got a good little story there that you can follow if there’s any more information.”
    “Alright, Amy, but this isn’t going to go away just because you think so,” she says and whirls on her heel. “Two deaths? It’s beginning to spell conspiracy to me.” Her nose wrinkles as the start of a frown.
    “Conspiracy? What have you been smoking?”
    She turns back at my office door. “I’m telling you, something’s going on. Both Baldwin and Boxer have ties to the hotel. And doesn’t it seem just the teensiest bit suspicious that people are dropping like fall leaves right after the old Senator goes? I don’t believe in coincidence,” she harrumphs.
    “What do you mean?” I ask. “Baldwin was found in the hotel bar. That’s a pretty tenuous tie. And what tie did Boxer have to the hotel? “
    “I told you that she was the agent who handled the sale back to Royce Calvert.”
    “I’m not sure you did, but so what? It’s a small town and there aren’t that many property sales,” I say.
    “What about the blueprints?” She’s talking to me as though I’m a slow three-year-old.
    Now I’m stumped. We aren’t having the same conversation.
    “What blueprints?”
    “When Jim searched Boxer’s house he found a set of blueprints. They turned out to be a copy from when the hotel was renovated in the 1960s,” she says with impatience.
    This seems a tad unusual, but I’m certainly not a commercial real estate person.
    “I can see where a set of plans like that could be handy,” I say. “If Royce was looking for financing, he’d want to know how much renovation was going to be needed.”
    “Huh,” Clarice snorts over her shoulder on her way out. “Don’t forget the ghost stories.”

 
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    I won’t let any of the Press staff know it, but I’m flattered when they come to me for advice. In a different world I may have gone into teaching, though a college classroom is too far removed from the adrenaline high of breaking news. I always feel a little tug of envy as Clarice heads out the door yelling, “I’ve got my cell phone,” when something comes over the scanner.
    Clarice is opinionated, a little truculent, and argues about assignments. But she writes two or three stories a day and garners awards. She lives for the adrenaline of breaking news, hanging on the sound of the police scanner. Her co-workers call her the Angel of Death. They don’t know she thinks it’s a compliment. She doesn’t know it isn’t.
    And now, there’s Dodson. It’s never good when reporters get involved with sources and even more iffy when it’s a cop.
    I leave another copy of the Senator’s obit taped to the front of Clarice’s monitor with a red “See me” note.
    She wants to talk about the scanner when she comes in. There’s a lot of chat about the Monroe cops looking for someone.
    “That’s way too much for just a missing person,” she slaps her hand down on the arm of the chair. “They’re covering up.”
    “Stop it. They can talk without covering