Maddie Cochere - Two Sisters and a Journalist 01 - Murder Under Construction Read Online Free Page A

false teeth, and when she did, she thought it was funny to stick them out at the kids. Doing so had only served to scare Kelly half to death when she was little, and for weeks after, we couldn’t stop her from looking in the mirror to see if her teeth were falling out.
    “Why in the world aren’t you dressed yet?” Pepper asked. “It’s almost noon.”
    “I don’t know. Yesterday wore me out, and I slept in.” I turned to Buck. “My power was out during the night, and now my air doesn’t work now. Will you take a quick look?”
    “Let me wash up, and I’ll be right over.”
    Pepper opened the car door. “I’ll be back in about an hour or so. Come over this afternoon and help me get things ready?”
    “Sure,” I said. “I’ll fill you in on what Jackie found out about the murder.”
    I shuffled back across the cul-de-sac with my newspaper. I needed some coffee.
    An hour later, I was happily settled in my murder room.
    Buck had fixed the air within minutes by simply flipping a switch in the breaker box. It never occurred to me to try that first. I assumed I would be looking at a huge repair bill, but my savings account was safe for another day.
    After Buck left, I showered, pulled on a pair of jeans with an elastic waist, and yanked a navy blue t-shirt over my head. The style had become a uniform for me. Nothing else was comfortable. If I was feeling festive, I might wear an orange or yellow tee, but chances were good you would find me in navy blue or black. I knew I wasn’t fooling anyone, but I felt better trying to hide my weight gain behind the dark clothing.
    My murder room was a cozy upstairs office. It was over the garage on the east end of the house. Alan had used it for a television room late at night, but I repainted the dark room with a pretty coral color and installed new beige carpeting. I never took the time to furnish the room until after I found the third murder victim last year.
    The first two bodies were crimes of passion. A husband murdered his wife and stuffed her in a garbage bag before tossing her into the dumpster next to the mortgage office where I worked. The large sign on the front of the dumpster clearly read: Property of Faye’s Dry Cleaning. No public disposal. That didn’t stop me from going to work early the next morning to toss in my two garbage bags, because I had missed my trash collector. It wouldn’t have been a problem if my watchband hadn’t hit the edge and broken. Instead of falling onto the ground, it fell into the dumpster. I ran into the mortgage office and grabbed a chair to stand on to look inside. The dumpster was only about a third full, and most of the trash was clean paper and plastic. I could see my watch in an empty box. I figured the best spot to land when I jumped in would be on the largest bag. I met Sergeant Rorski that day.
    The second body was simply because I was the first person to drive by and see her along the roadside where her boyfriend had dumped her after a heated argument and a deadly beating.
    When I found the third body in the Buxley cemetery, Sergeant Rorski and his men determined the wife did it, and they looked no further. But I had known Lucy Washington all my life, and not only did I believe she would never murder her husband, I believed her when she said she didn’t do it. It was then I furnished the murder room with a loveseat, credenza, desk, and a white board for keeping track of clues.
    With my second cup of coffee in hand, I swiveled my chair around and leaned back to gaze at the empty white board. This would be the third time I was inserting myself into a murder investigation. After years of watching Law and Order , CSI , Monk , Bones , and just about every other crime show there was, I thought our small town police department didn’t put enough effort into making sure they had the right person for the crime when something major happened. At first Pepper thought I was crazy to start sleuthing, but when I found Lucy