Minor in Possession Read Online Free Page B

supreme effort to control herself, but the results weren’t entirely successful. I noticed that her brightly tipped fingers closed tightly over the ends of the chair armrests even as she leaned back to regard me with a studied look of arch contempt.
    â€œYou’re a bully, Mr. Beaumont, and you know it. How dare you browbeat Lucy Washington into letting you call the sheriff’s department?”
    The previous night’s lack of sleep hadn’t left me feeling particularly charitable toward anyone, most especially Louise Crenshaw. During our verbal battle over whether or not to report the car incident, Lucy Washington had invoked Louise’s name over and over. According to Santa Lucia, Mrs. Crenshaw had decreed an unwritten but nonetheless inviolable rule that she and only she was to notify the authorities of any irregularities involving Ironwood Ranch and its residents. But at four-thirty that morning the Crenshaw answering machine had been the only one in the household taking phone calls.
    I had finally overruled Lucy Washington’s objections by simply picking up the telephone and making the forbidden call myself.
    â€œLet me point out that my car had been stolen, Mrs. Crenshaw. Why the hell shouldn’t I report it?”
    â€œOh, come now, Mr. Beaumont. Stolen? Aren’t we being a bit melodramatic? Joyriding is more like it. After all, I understand the car is safely back in the parking lot this morning. I believe it wasalready there by the time you made your forcible phone call to Deputy Hanson up in Yarnell. Isn’t it far more likely that Joey just borrowed it?”
    My temper flared not only at her tone but also at her holier-than-thou attitude. “No, he didn’t borrow it,” I replied shortly, “because the word ‘borrow’ implies my giving permission, which I most certainly did not. He took the keys out of my desk without asking. I don’t know where he went with it, but according to the rental agreement, it’s been driven several hundred miles since I picked it up at the airport. I drove straight here. That couldn’t be more than seventy-five miles at the outside.”
    She frowned. “Your family is here this week. Isn’t it possible one of them used the car?”
    â€œThey came in their own cars,” I replied. “And I haven’t been anywhere near the Grand AM since I checked in other than to walk by it in the lot on my way to Group.”
    The magenta nails moved swiftly from the armrest to the desktop, where she tapped them thoughtfully.
    Sitting there eyeball to eyeball with Louise Crenshaw, I somehow failed to mention the .38, and not because it slipped my mind, either. At the moment the fact that Joey Rothman had fired my Smith and Wesson worried me a whole lot more than the idea of his taking the car, but what was the point of bringing it up? I figured there’d be enough hell to pay if and when Madame Crenshaw discovered that the gun existed at all. In themeantime, what she didn’t know didn’t hurt her.
    â€œSpeaking of Deputy Hanson, where the hell is he?” I grumbled. “He told me he’d be here between six-thirty and seven, and it’s already after seven. How far are we from Yarnell anyway?”
    Louise sat up in her chair, rested her elbows on the desk, folded her hands together, leaned her chin on them, and smiled an icy smile.
    â€œI called Mike’s office this morning as soon as I learned what was going on. It seemed to me that the situation didn’t merit his making a special trip.”
    â€œAre you telling me you told him not to come?” I sputtered.
    Louise gave me another chilly, condescending sneer. “If you’ll just allow me to finish, Mr. Beaumont. I told Mike I didn’t think it was necessary for him to make a special trip down here just for this, but he said he was coming to Wickenburg anyway. In fact, he would have been here by now, but the dispatcher