Murder of a Smart Cookie: A Scumble River Mystery Read Online Free Page B

twisted skeptically. “I can almost picture you doing mat. That would be the same day you got your nose pierced and a tattoo of a snake on your butt.” She shook her head. “Cookie Caldwell is a fool for trying to cheat someone like that in a small town.”
    “I’m sure she thought no one would ever find out.”
    “She was wrong.” May punctuated her statement by pulling down the visor and smoothing her hair away from her face. The short salt-and-pepper waves immediately sprang back. She scowled at her reflection. “Vince isn’t cutting my hair short enough again.” Vince was Skye’s older brother and the owner of Great Expectations Hair Salon.
    Skye shook her head. “Never mind your hair, Mom.” It was hard to keep her mother’s attention on any one issue. “Do you know of any other job openings in the area?”
    May paused in reapplying her lipstick. “Sure. I have just the thing for you. And you’d be doing the town and the family a favor.”
    “No.” Skye felt a bubble of panic in her throat. “Tell me it’s not what I think it is.”
    “I’m sure I can’t read your mind, Missy.” May’s false huffiness cinched Skye’s hunch.
    “I can’t work for Uncle Dante. He doesn’t like me. He blames me for exposing his fiddling with the Leofanti trust.” A couple of years ago May’s older brother had had his hand slapped by the rest of the family when Skye discovered he’d been using some creative accounting to buy his personal vehicles and farm equipment.
    “He’s in a real bind. Dante’d hire the devil himself, if he thought Satan could help him out of his predicament.”
    Skye wished she didn’t, but she knew what her mother was talking about. “What happened to the last one?”
    “Phyllis quit Friday.”
    “Why? He didn’t make a pass at her, did he?”
    “Of course not. He’s a married man,” May protested, then muttered under her breath, “Besides, she was older than I am.” May was fifty-nine.
    “So’s Uncle Dante.”
    May arched a brow at Skye, who shrugged. Everyone knew, although no one would say it out loud, that Dante liked ‘em young. He considered Skye at thirty-three to be over the hill.
    Skye persisted. “So why did Phyllis quit?”
    May suddenly found the aqua and white leather seat fascinating, staring at it as if she had never seen it before. “She said she wasn’t being paid enough to be yelled at and humiliated.”
    “Uncle Dante lost his temper.”
    May nodded.
    “And threw a tantrum.”
    May nodded again.
    “Did he break anything?”
    “His middle finger.” The corner of May’s mouth lifted, but she swiftly suppressed the smile.
    “I won’t ask how he managed that.”
    “Something to do with a file drawer and a statue of Napoleon.”
    “Sounds creative,” Skye commented. “Let me get this straight. Uncle Dante’s big moneymaking scheme for the town, the Route 66 Yard Sale, is less than eight weeks away and the project coordinator has quit?”
    “Yep.”
    “So, he has no one to attend to the thousand and one problems that will pop up between now and opening day?”
    “Yep.”
    “How many coordinators has he run through?” Skye asked.
    “Phyllis was the fifth one.”
    Skye thought it over. It would be hell working for her uncle, and she wasn’t even sure she could do the job. The Route 66 Yard Sale was amuch bigger undertaking than the Greek Olympics Fund-raiser she had organized for her sorority, Alpha Sigma Alpha, back in college, and that had nearly killed her.
    “Dante’s already spent more than half of the money Gabriel Scumble gave us,” May explained. “The townspeople will lynch him if the Route 66 Yard Sale is a failure.” The previous fall Gabriel Scumble, the last living descendant of the town’s founder, Pierre Scumble, had given the community a check for one hundred thousand dollars in order to make up for his ancestor’s having cheated the people of Scumble River two hundred years ago.
    “Is Uncle Charlie still against