Free Sugar Coated Sins by Jessica Beck

breath.   “A huge shard of glass
just missed hitting me, but I got lucky.”
    “I’m okay, too,” Karen echoed,
though clearly she wasn’t, at least not emotionally.
    I stood up and headed for the
front door, with Grace close on my heels.
    She couldn’t get away from Karen,
though.   The librarian grabbed her leg
and wouldn’t let her go.   “Don’t leave
me!”
    “Go on,” Grace ordered.   “I’ll be there in a second.”
    I nodded as I raced outside to see
if I could catch a glimpse of whoever had hurled that brick through the glass.
    But I was too late.
    Whoever had done it was already
gone.

 

 
    Chapter
10

 
 
    Grace joined me a second
later.   “Did you see anyone outside?” she
asked me.
    “No.   Whoever did it is long gone.”
    “Suzanne, this wasn’t just some
random coincidence,” Grace said as she looked back at the house.   Remnants of glass still stayed within the circular
frame, and it was clear that the builder had cut a few corners and had used
regular glass instead of the safety type required.   The results could have been calamitous, and
only dumb luck had saved the three of us from getting some nasty cuts at the very
least.
    “It’s hard to imagine that it
could be just chance,” I agreed.   “How
did you manage to work yourself free from Karen’s grasp?”
    “I thought you might be in
trouble, so I found a way.”
    We walked back inside and found
Karen Harris stuffing a few things into her overnight bag, abandoning her more
detailed packing from before.   The moment
she saw us, she said, “That’s it.   I’m
leaving this instant, and if the killer wants anything that I’ve left behind,
he’s welcome to it all.”
    “Do you have some reason to
believe that a man killed Benjamin Port?” Grace asked.
    “No, but I can’t bring myself to
use a generic ‘they’ when ‘he’ is the proper way to speak.”   She might be in fear for her life, but old
habits died hard, and being precise in her language was clearly one of
them.   “I told you both, didn’t I?   You need to stay out of this.”
    “No one wants to hurt us,” Grace
said reasonably.
    “That might have been true before,
but I’m afraid that it’s not the case anymore,” Karen said worriedly as she
zipped her bag shut.
    As we followed her outside toward
her car, she stopped long enough to lock the front door behind her.   “What are you talking about, Karen?”   I asked her.
    “Ben’s killer obviously just
warned me to keep my mouth shut, but he must have seen your Jeep blocking me in
my own driveway while he was here.   It’s
a distinctive vehicle, Suzanne.   The
logical assumption would be that I told you everything. At least, that’s the
worst-case scenario the killer can probably imagine.   That means that he must assume that you know
what I know, so it makes you a target as well.”
    I didn’t like the sound of that
one little bit, but it wasn’t as though it hadn’t happened before.   I’d been in the sights of murderers in the
past, and yet I’d managed to survive each attempt on my life.   I realized, though, that it would only take
one successful effort to end that streak.   I had a sudden thought.   “That
means that you have to tell me now.”
    As she started for her car, a Mini
Cooper with a sticker that said I LOVE BOOKS, she said, “I don’t follow.”
    “Karen, my life’s already in
danger.   Shouldn’t I at least have the
benefit of knowing what you know so I have a chance to fight back?”
    The retired librarian looked as
though she wanted to cry, but finally, she nodded in agreement.   “I can’t argue with your logic.   Okay, here goes.   It might mean nothing, but two things
happened near the time of Benjamin Port’s demise.   The first is that I saw Hillary Mast heading
toward Ben’s place on foot the day he died.”
    “How is that significant?” I asked.
    “I might be wrong, but I could
swear that I saw a jar of canned chicken in