The Shop Read Online Free

several times removed, if the guy was to be believed.
    First e-mails, then phone messages, now text messages.
    Get a life.
    Outside, it was sunny. Another beautiful California day. Nick stared at the sky. Feeling better.
    Much better.
    Maybe it was the accident—the feeling he’d cheated death once again. But this morning he’d awakened full of purpose. Nick had been trying to come up with the idea for another book, but nothing had interested him—until now. This story was different. This story had been dropped in his lap.
    The best ideas always came like this, on waking. Before he even got up to take a leak.
    He felt excitement building, the sense of purpose , deep in his gut.
    Nick had found his inspiration.

7
    Chief Akers’s house sat on a street dead-ending at a small public park. The yard was dominated by a moss-draped oak and a fish pond. A boat was backed into the carport, which was otherwise empty.
    Maddy Akers drove a GMC Yukon.
    Jolie pressed the buzzer and waited. No one answered. She rang again. Then knocked. Mrs. Akers either wasn’t at home or she was in a deep sleep.
    A car turned onto the street from the main drag. From the sound of the engine, it was a four-banger.
    The car did a funny thing. It came to a stop three doors down, in the middle of the street. Jolie was a defensive driver and could read car body language—most good drivers can.
    This car—an old Toyota Corolla—braked, then crawled forward to the next driveway. The driver executed an awkward turn, rushed and sloppy.
    The driver’s head swiveled back in Jolie’s direction, long hair flipping with the motion. Either it was a female driver or a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan. The Corolla went back up to the road, blinker on, and turned right. Too far away to see the license plate.
    Jolie’s own take-home vehicle was a Crown Vic with black-walls. It was supposed to look like a civilian’s car, but the jack-in-the-box clown on the antenna didn’t fool anybody. She’d been spotted.
    She jogged to her car, started it up, and followed.
    On Kelso, Jolie saw the Corolla up ahead, stopped at the light. She stayed in the other lane and to the left, behind an old truck. The Corolla only went a city block before turning in at Bizzy’s Diner. The parking lot was already full. Jolie cruised by, parked at the convenience store next door, and watched in her rearview as the woman got out. The woman was slight and pale. Lackluster red hair fell straight from a middle part. Low-riding jeans. The woman held a ratty shoulder bag close as she jabbered on the cell phone held to her ear. She snapped the phone shut, dumped it in her purse, and walked across the parking lot as if someone might jump out at her at any minute.
    Jolie ran the plate: 1989 blue Toyota Corolla, belonging to one Amy Perdue.
    Luke Perdue, the hostage-taker at the Starliner Motel, had a sister.
    It was in the paper and on the news.

    Bizzy’s: pebbled gold water glasses, rabbit-warren rooms, mismatched tablecloths, Friday night catfish buffets. Jolie parked herself at a table in one room where she could look through the doorway and see Amy Perdue in the other.
    The woman was still on the phone. She looked more than nervous; she looked scared.
    Jolie ordered a big breakfast. The waitress, Eileen, had big platinum curls. Eileen’s son, a Marine lance corporal, came back from Afghanistan with a severe head injury. On Eileen’s days off, she drove three hours to the VA hospital in Biloxi, and three hours back, to visit her son, even though he would never recognize her again.
    Eileen never mentioned her son, but she’d been quick to offer Jolie her condolences when her husband died. With Danny, most people pretended it never happened. Even people Jolie worked with and saw every day, people who had worked with him, too. Ignore it and it will go away.
    Eileen came by with Jolie’s breakfast and a smaller plate piled up with Bizzy’s world-famous hush puppies. “Heard what happened. You need to