Murder Alfresco #3 Read Online Free

he said, “starting at the very beginning, using as much detail as you can remember, and not leaving anything out, even if it seems inconsequential.”
    She looked away and drew a slow breath. Beginning with Andre’s phone call asking her to join him at the Dusty Vine, she described everything that had happened that evening. When she was done, he asked her to repeat certain parts to be sure he had them right, then turned the tape recorder off.
    “One more question, McCoskey. Off the record.” Sergeant Harvey studied her face. “Why you?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “In your opinion, why are you the one who found her?”
    Sunny looked at him uncertainly. “I don’t know. I don’t think there is a reason. It just happened.”
    “Wrong. I’ll tell you why,” he said. “You know who finds most of the dead bodies in this world?”
    “The police?”
    “Farm workers. The guys who get up before dawn, drive to remote places where the only thing for miles is grapes or sorghum or sugar beets, and go to work looking at the ground. Those guys find the dead bodies.”
    Sunny nodded, not sure she followed his point.
    “Those guys have no choice,” he said. “They have to get up before dawn and wander around in the middle of nowhere in thedark. That’s how they make their miserable living. But you, you do it for fun.” He shook his head and looked away to the east, where the sky had turned teal blue. “Every time I turn around you’re crashing through the bushes before the sun comes up, getting yourself in trouble. That’s the part I have trouble understanding.”
    He was talking about an incident that had occurred the previous fall. She’d pulled over on the way to work to check a certain intriguing slope for chanterelles, when the owner drove by and called the cops on her. She’d nearly been cited for trespassing, but managed to buy her way out of it by inviting the officer and the property owner to have lunch at her restaurant on the house. They’d since worked out a mutually satisfactory agreement. She could gather mushrooms on his property, he had a standing invitation for lunch at Wildside when chanterelles were in season.
    “Coincidence,” said Sunny. “I happened to be mushrooming before work, when it happens to be very early in the morning. Tonight is different. Tonight I wasn’t thinking straight. I was tired, and I just wanted to get out of there. Then I saw the truck, and then I saw the body. I know that truck is part of it. Whoever was driving it has to be the murderer. Who else could it have been?”
    Steve sighed. “Anything else? Detail about the truck?”
    “No, that’s it.”
    Steve nodded. “You’ve had a tough time. Don’t think about it anymore for the night, okay? Try to get some sleep and forget about all this. Something may come back to you once you’ve had a chance to rest. Maybe you’ll remember part of the license plate. Some little detail you forgot.”
    “I don’t think so. I never looked at the license plate. I don’tthink it was lit. And I didn’t see the driver. I’m not even sure what make the truck was. All I know is it was white.”
    “But you referred to the driver as
he
several times.”
    “That’s just a guess, or intuition, or habit. I don’t think I even saw the driver before he hit the lights. If I did, it was just for a second.”
    “Maybe you saw more than you realize. That’s what intuition is. Subconscious data trying to make itself known.”
    Sergeant Harvey took a long moment to scrutinize her face, going over it for evidence the way she imagined he would go over a car or a hotel room or an object found at the scene of the crime, searching it for clues as if the way she held her mouth or the stray eyelash on her cheek would reveal where to find the white truck.
    He nodded to himself. “We’ll talk again soon. Until then, don’t drive yourself nuts thinking about it. You did all you could.” He looked up at an officer who had been trying to get