Free Death of a Wolfman (A Lily Gayle Lambert Mystery Book 1) by Susan Boles Page A

chimed three in the morning, my phone rang. Startled, my arm jerked, knocking the pistol to the hardwood floor with a loud bang. Elliot woke up and started yowling.
    Who could be calling at that hour? The person who’d left the squirrel? Maybe to give me a spoken warning of some kind?
    I stood and walked over to the phone. I glanced at the caller ID and didn’t recognize the number. Deciding to let the machine pick up in case whoever the caller was would leave a message, I went back over to my chair and picked up the pistol from the floor. Thank goodness I’d left the safety on or the gun might have discharged on impact with the floor. Then I’d’ve had yet another round with Ben about staying in the house alone.
    As soon as my not-able-to-answer-the-phone-right-now message clicked off, the voice of LizBeth Mitchell echoed in the room.
    “Lily Gayle, I know you’re home and something happened there earlier. On a quiet night a scream carries a long way, and I was looking out my bedroom window to see if I could figure out what was going on.
    “I can see your house from my windows and I saw the sheriff drive up, and then a flashlight in the woods. We need to talk. But I don’t want us to be seen together. There’s an old gazebo by a lake about halfway between the road and my house. Come up the drive and you’ll see the path into the woods at a big curve in the driveway before you can see the house. No one will see you from the house; everyone will be downstairs at the time I want us to meet. Make sure no one sees you turn off the road on your end. Be at the gazebo at nine o’clock this morning.”
    The phone clicked off, leaving me stunned. Did LizBeth have some information about who’d put the squirrel on my back porch? Or was it something more?
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    I glanced both ways down the tar-over-gravel blacktop that served as the main road past the driveway to Mitchell Manor. Nothing moved in either direction. I rolled into the driveway, then had to really press down on my pedals.
    The manor house sat at the top of a hill so the driveway began its climb right at the edge of the road. I was beginning to work up a sweat in the early November morning air when I spotted a path leading to the left off the driveway. It must be the one I was supposed to take to the gazebo.
    To give my legs a rest from all the pedaling, I decided to walk to the meeting place. Surely it couldn’t be far from here. Pushing my bike a few feet into the woods, I stashed it behind a group of three trees close enough together to hide the bike from the casual glance of anyone going up or down the driveway.
    A big flock of late-season blackbirds roosted in the trees above my head, watching in silence as I walked along the twisting path. Nothing else stirred. Not even a breath of wind. The only sound the crunching of the dead leaves under my feet.
    Walking at a brisk pace, I tried to imagine what it could be that LizBeth wanted to pass along to me in such secrecy. Did it have something to do with her family history? Was there some juicy piece of information she wanted known? A clue that would lead me along a straighter path than the one I was pursuing?
    Or had she seen something last night? Something to do with the dead squirrel at my back door? Shuddering in revulsion, I put the squirrel out of my mind for the moment. I’d go see Ben right after this meeting to see what he might have come up with to explain that awful trophy.
    The Mitchell house was too far away from my own for LizBeth to have seen anything clearly. Unless she’d been looking around at just the right time with some binoculars. But would one of the exalted Mitchells lower herself to spying on the town in that way? Somehow I couldn’t picture it, though people did do strange things.
    Just look at how many folks in the county had scanners they