The Murder Pit Read Online Free

that he would be arriving shortly.
    “But everyone will know,” I said, shaking my head.
    “Uh, pretty sure everyone knows now that our driveway is a satellite parking lot for the police department.”
    He was right, of course. Our house was on the busiest street in town – we actually lived ON Main Street – and there was no hiding that something was going on at our home.
    I sighed. “This is not what I envisioned in our new old home.”
    He put his arm around me. “I know.”
    I leaned into him. His arms felt good. Solid. Reassuring. “I’m sorry.”
    “Why? Did you put the body down there?”
    I pulled back and whacked him in the stomach. “No, you dork. I mean I’m sorry that this house has been a constant source of… work …ever since we moved in.”
    “Yeah, but I’m not having to do any work on this particular problem,” he said, smiling. “I get to gawk like the kids.”
    The kids. After we’d assured Sophie and Grace that the dead body was not, in fact, Santa Claus, the hysteria had died down a little. There were still nervous whispers and anxious looks but the screaming had stopped. All four of them were in the living room, their noses plastered to the windows, watching the police outside our home.
    I watched them for a minute, then dug the mop out of the broom closet and stuck it in the sink. The entire tile floor was flecked with  mud and snow.
    “You know what I mean,” I said, returning to our conversation.
    “Yeah, I do and it’s fine,” he said. He leaned against the counter and sipped his coffee. “Just think of this as a little more…cleaning.”
    I glared at him. “Not.”
    I attacked the floor, gliding the mop across the tiled surface. Muffled voices echoed beneath the kitchen, but I couldn’t make out any of the words. I assumed someone besides Ted had made their way inside the coal chute. A shudder rippled through me. I wondered how long the body had been in there. I wondered what condition it was in. I wondered who the hell it was. And who’d put it there. I wondered a lot of things.
    A sharp knock on the kitchen door snapped me out of my thoughts. Jake pushed off the counter and reached for the doorknob.
    A short, wide woman with a snowy white crew cut wiped her boots hard on the mat outside the door. Her cheeks were pink and her hard blue eyes looked first at Jake, then me. She looked like an aging Susan Powter.
    “I’m Detective Priscilla Hanborn,” she said, her voice thick and raspy, as if the collected smoke of years of smoking cigarettes had settled permanently in her throat. I couldn’t imagine anyone looking and sounding less like a Priscilla. “From the county offices.”
    Jake smiled and motioned her inside. 
    Her eyes darted between the two of us, a sour expression on her face. “You’re the homeowners.”
    “We are,” Jake said. “I’m Jake Gardener. This is my wife, Daisy.”
    She didn’t offer her hand, just dipped her chin as a curt hello to each of us. She adjusted her belt, hitching up her pants beneath a khaki jacket that looked two sizes too big for her. “Hear we got a body?”
    “Uh, yes,” Jake said, clearing his throat. “We were in the crawlspace downstairs…”
    “Who found it?” Detective Hanborn asked sharply.
    Jake and I looked at each other.
    “I guess I did,” I said. I stowed the mop back in the closet and wiped my hands down the front of my jeans. They came away covered in wet dust and I bit back a sigh. “I lifted up the door to the chute and…”
    “Why?” she asked, fixing me with a hard stare. “Why did you open the door?”
    “Because we didn’t…we didn’t know there was a door,” I explained. I didn’t want to say that I’d heard the house had been built by the owners of the first bank of Moose River and that part of me had thought maybe, just maybe, we might find a secret tunnel leading to some long-forgotten vault. “The pipe was frozen and it was the first time we’d ever gone into the space. So