Free Dead Giveaway by Brenda Novak

responsible for the death of his uncle and wanted to see them punished. He figured he’d waited too long. But, prior to last July, the Bible hadn’t been seen since the reverend went missing. If Joe had planted it, where did he get it in the first place?
    She made a note to ask Madeline if she could take a look at it.
    Hendricks gathered phlegm in his mouth and spat into the wastebasket behind her, jerking her out of her concentration.
    â€œDo you mind?” she asked, disgusted by the crude noise.
    â€œMind what?” he replied and pointed at her notepad. “What’s that you’re writing?”
    If she ignored him, would he leave? she wondered hopefully. But she wasn’t that lucky. Her silence only encouraged him to hunch down and peer over her shoulder. “If…Joe…found…the…Bible…at…the…campsite…as…he…claims…how…did…he…know…where…to…look?” He read slowly, trying to decipher her handwriting. “Where…else…could…he…have…gotten…it? Who…has…it…now?”
    â€œHendricks, don’t you have—” Allie started, but he interrupted her.
    â€œHeck, I can answer those questions for you.” He used the door frame to straighten because his knees struggled beneath his weight. “Grace took the Bible off Reverend Barker when Clay killed him, just like Joe says.”
    â€œThen why would she keep it for so long before tryingto dispose of it? She was an assistant district attorney, for crying out loud, and very successful at her job. Don’t you think she’d know better than to hang on to something that would raise so much suspicion if she was caught with it?”
    â€œMaybe she was moving it to another hiding place,” he said. “Like she tried moving Reverend Barker’s body.”
    â€œThere’s no proof that she was moving anyone’s body,” Allie reminded him.
    â€œWhat do you suppose she was doing at the farm in the middle of the night with a flashlight and a shovel?”
    â€œAccording to her—” Allie thumbed through some sheets of paper, came up with the statement she’d read only a few minutes earlier and quoted Grace. “‘After hearing so many people accuse my mother and brother of killing my stepfather, I was finally ready to see for myself if he was buried out behind the barn.’”
    â€œYeah, right,” Hendricks said.
    â€œShe wouldn’t want to do it in the middle of the day—let anyone else know she’d begun to doubt her family. Besides, if they knew what she had planned, they might’ve tried to stop her. Makes sense.”
    â€œI don’t care. I don’t believe her.”
    Allie wasn’t sure she believed Grace, either. But she wasn’t going to jump to the same conclusions as everyone else. When she operated from a preconceived notion, she often missed the most salient clues in a case. She’d learned that the hard way. While tracking down a serial rapist in Chicago, she’d been so sure it was one man when it was really another that she’d misled the whole task force and the real culprit had slipped away. It had taken them an additional two years to find him. “We can’t prove she’s lying,” she said. “As a matter of fact, right now we can’t prove anything. Joe marked the spot where Grace wasdigging, then we took a backhoe to Clay’s farm. And what did we get for our trouble? The remains of the family dog, which died of old age before Barker ever went missing. That’s it.”
    â€œWe?” he challenged.
    â€œThe police,” she clarified.
    â€œI was there, and I’m telling you, as soon as we struck bone Grace was sure we’d found Barker. You should’ve seen her. She nearly fainted when we pulled that skull from the ground.”
    â€œShe might’ve thought it proved