Oh Say Can You Fudge Read Online Free Page A

His shirt was off and EMT George Marron was cleaning up the blisters where the shrapnel had burned through Charles’s coat and uniform.
    A young guy in firefighter gear who looked to be eighteen years old sat beside Officer Brown. The kid appeared dirty but unharmed. His brown hair stood up in short spikes and his brown eyes glittered as he talked fast and furiously motioned with his hands. He was too far away for us to hear what he was saying but it was obvious from the rise of his shoulders and the action of his hands that he was still very excited.
    “Looks like the kid has a story to tell for the rest of his life,” Ed said. “Wait until the adrenaline crash. Poor kid is going to pass out cold.”
    I smiled. “I know what that’s like. I’ve had a little bit of experience with adrenaline myself.”
    “Thankfully no one was badly hurt. I checked on the planes and there was only minor damage.” Sophie looked a little worse for wear with dirt in her hair and soot on her face. Her once spotless uniform was a mess and yet she was still cute. Go figure.
    “Every one of you was darn lucky.” Angus narrowed his eyes at me. “I still have my rabbit’s foot right here in my pocket.” He patted his breast pocket where his notepad peeked out. There was a bump at the bottom of the pocket. “So don’t get any ideas of finding any dead guys.”
    “Too late,” I said and shrugged.
    Angus had this idea that I was bad luck for old men. He’d started carrying a rabbit’s foot for luck against what he called my bad juju ever since Joe Jessop was found dead in my hotel. I don’t know why Angus was worried. I’d only found two dead old men so far. . . .
    “What do you mean, too late?” His eyes narrowed farther.
    “There was a dead man in the warehouse.” Rex shook his head and squinted at the burned-out building. “The fire trashed the crime scene.”
    “Crime scene?” Angus pulled his notepad back out of his pocket. “What kind of crime scene? Messy from a fight? Was there blood from a bullet wound or did you find him hanging?”
    “No details at this point.” Rex held out his hand in a stop fashion. He looked straight at me. “Not a word.”
    “What?” I shrugged and gave him my best innocent look.
    Officer Lasko approached the group, her blond ponytail bouncing as she walked. Kelsey Lasko was petite, thin, and my age. Her blue eyes sent me a thinly veiled look of contempt. “You seem to be at a lot of crime scenes, Ms. McMurphy. Why is that?”
    “Just lucky, I guess.” I shrugged then put my hands in the pocket of my jacket. Thankfully, my jean jacket had not taken any burning shrapnel and remained in one dirty piece.
    “Were they able to retrieve the body?” Rex asked.
    Officer Lasko turned her neat, perfectly pressed, uniformed body away from me. “No, sir. It appears the blast threw the body up against the wall. We have a serious burn outline and a pile of bone and ash.”
    “Now that’s interesting.” Angus licked the end of his stubby pencil and made a few notes in his pad of paper.
    “That had to be more than fireworks,” Rex said. “The fireworks were stored in magazines.”
    “The magazines were tampered with,” Ed said. “The fire marshal is investigating.”
    “So is that arson? Or tampering with a crime scene?” I had worked up a good sweat with all the running and putting out the little coals and such. My hair stuck to my forehead where the sweat had pinned it. Now that we’d been standing for a while, the wind off the lake felt cold. I huddled inside my jacket.
    “Could be both,” Officer Lasko said. “The two incidents might not even be related.”
    “I say, use the duck test,” Ed said.
    “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck,” we all said in unison and then chuckled.
    “Fine,” Officer Lasko said and held up her small elegant hands. “If it’s not a duck, we may have a killer and an arsonist on our hands.”
    “Let’s hope