Free Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels by Mindy Starns Clark Page B

either away from or back to Kawshek when for some reason he pulled over to the side of the darkened road a few miles out of town. Considering that the physical evidence had been found on the right side of the road, I thought it logical that he was heading away from Kawshek when it happened.
    But why had he stopped? It wasn’t a flat tire—earlier this afternoon, peering over the shoulders of the police, I had gotten a good look at the lug nuts on all four wheels, and none of them had shown any signs of having been recently tampered with. So what was it? Was someone in the car with him who asked him to pull over? Was someone waiting on the road, waving him down?
    Regardless of what it was that got him to pull over, apparently Eddie Ray climbed out of the car, was whacked on the head by someone wielding the tire iron from that car, and then he was shoved into the trunk, where he remained unconscious, slowly bleeding to death. But here was the tricky part: At that point, someone had driven the car, with his bleeding body inside the trunk, all the way back to Shayna’s apartment and parked it there. No wonder the police thought she had done it.
    The very fact that the car was parked at Shayna’s precluded any thoughts about a random killer or some sort of homicidal maniac wandering the Chesapeake. Whoever killed Eddie Ray had known who he was and where the car he was driving belonged, because they had gone to the trouble to deliver it right back there. Was it someone who wanted to frame Shayna for murder? If so, then perhaps the marijuana under the seat had been a part of that frame-up as well. I made a mental note to ask her if she had any enemies.
    I also wanted to ask her about the car keys. Did Eddie Ray—or anyone else for that matter—have a duplicate set of keys to her car? If not, where had her keys been the next day when she was ready to drive the car? Surely the killer hadn’t delivered the car back to its parking spot and quietly put the keys back where they belonged in Shayna’s apartment. That would be creepy indeed.
    Facts swirling in my head, I climbed out from under my nice, warm covers and grabbed my laptop. I got back in bed, opened it up, and propped it on my knees. This wasn’t an official investigation by any means, but it would be a shame not to follow my standard procedure of creating an information database about the case so I could keep track of the data I had gleaned.
    A half hour later I had created the database and loaded in all of the information and theories I could possibly think of. I decided I would talk to the public defender in the morning just to make sure Shayna was in good hands. Once that was done, I would offer my cooperation, provide any information I had, and then back away and let the police and the attorney do their jobs. I could offer Shayna support but would try and stay out of the investigation.
    I shut down the computer, set it on the floor, and then reached over to click off my light. Now, perhaps, I could put the whole thing out of my mind and try and get some rest. I closed my eyes and, even as wired up as I was, at some point I must’ve drifted off to sleep.
    The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the darkness, vaguely aware of Sal making some kind of noise at my feet.Confused, I propped up on one elbow, trying to peer through the darkness at my dog.
    I could feel her pressed against me, closer than usual, and in the silence of the night I listened as a low, gutteral growl bubbled out from her throat.
    “Sal?”
    Usually, she wasn’t a very verbal dog, not much of a barker or a growler. The sound she was making now was almost foreign to me, but I could feel her little body trembling against me even as she continued to growl.
    Slowly, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
    Without speaking, I reached down and put a hand on her shoulders, and for a moment, she stopped. Then she barked, a sharp, sudden yap of warning to whoever or whatever it was that had put her