Free Death Crashes the Party by Vickie Fee Page B

I bet if she was supervising Larry Joe, he’d have that bathroom finished by now.”
    I plopped down on the porch and started scraping a badly peeling board near the porch floor.
    â€œYou’ve gone all quiet. What’s wrong?” Di said after a short interlude of silence.
    â€œNothing really. I just started thinking about the renovations on my house.”
    â€œThat could be depressing if you think too much about it.”
    â€œIt’s not the work that depresses me,” I said. “You know my business has definitely dropped off since the murders. And I don’t think Larry Joe’s having to turn away new customers at the moment, either. If this trend continues, we may have to tighten up the belt financially speaking. And since we like to eat, we’d probably have to put renovations on hold.”
    â€œSnap out of it,” Di said. She climbed down the ladder, knelt on the porch beside me, and began plucking off the paint chips stuck to her arms. “You know every business has its ups and downs. Liv 4 Fun and the trucking company will be fine. In fact, I predict such glowing recommendations from Mrs. Erdman after their anniversary party that you’ll have crackpots lined up around the block, waiting to book your services.”
    She turned to ascend the ladder, and I dipped my brush in the primer and smacked her on the butt with it.
    Di and I wrapped up our four-hour shift at about noon. I grabbed a couple of sausages and biscuits to go for my lunch and drove home to get cleaned up.
    Larry Joe had said he would be on the road to Huntsville by noon at the latest. So a little before 1:00 p.m. I drove out to McKay’s to do some snooping. I hoped Ralph would be out to lunch. He wasn’t. I made some lame pretext of coming by to pick up some papers for Larry Joe. Ralph nodded and gave me a faint smile as he kept on walking. I was in luck. Ralph, and everyone else, for that matter, was too busy to pay any attention to me. Now, if I only knew what I was looking for.
    I knew better than to wander into the locker room. Some of the truckers might be changing clothes. Besides, I was certain the Farrells’ lockers had already been cleaned out by now. So, after I made sure Ralph wasn’t looking, I skulked just around the corner from the locker room to eavesdrop on the guys, hoping to pick up any useful tidbits of information. All I heard were a couple of off-color jokes, one of which I didn’t even understand.
    I decided to look around upstairs. I headed in the direction of the garage office where bills of lading and various other kinds of paperwork are dropped off temporarily before being delivered to the front office. It would be the most likely place for me to go if I actually was picking up something for Larry Joe. Directly across the hall from that office was the door to the security office, which, to my chagrin, was locked. I ambled up the hall and noted that Ralph was still out of his office. His top desk drawer was ajar, revealing an unattended key ring. I stood in the doorway to his office, stretching my arms and massaging my neck. With no one looking my way, I backed into the office, reached one hand behind my back, and scooped up the keys.
    Fortunately, there were only three keys on this ring, and even more fortuitously, the second one I tried fit the security office door. After a quick glance around, I slipped inside the office, closed the door behind me, and found myself standing in a dark, windowless room. After a moment of fumbling, I happened upon the light switch.
    The office was small, about nine by nine feet. I’ve measured enough rooms for party arrangements that I can usually size up a space pretty accurately by sight. There was a desk cluttered with papers, two cabinets along one wall, and a closed-circuit monitor facing the desk, with a live feed from the truck bays below. I watched the action for a moment, before taking a look in the cabinets. In