Free Death Before Diamonds (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 10) by Mary Maxwell Page A

tomorrow afternoon.”
    “That’s okay,” Rex said. “I really
just wanted to see a friendly face.”
    “I hope you mean me,” I said with a
light smile.
    He rolled his eyes. “Who else?”
    “Well, I can see that you’re
hurting quite a lot. I won’t stay but a minute.”
    He nodded slowly. “It just feels
like someone’s pushing and pulling on my side all at once. The doctor and
nurses said it’s only a matter of time before I’m back to normal.”
    “Do you mind if we talk about what
happened?” I asked.
    Rex blinked. “You mean when they tried
to electrocute me?”
    “It was more than one person?”
    “Yes,” he answered. “Two women,
including Arlene. I finally got her address. I thought maybe she could help me
find him. And when I went there, I didn’t do anything wrong. I just knocked on
her door and asked if she’d seen my brother.”
    “And then she pulled out a Taser
and attacked you?”
    “I don’t know what it was.” His
eyelids sagged and his head bobbed. “But she didn’t zap me until we were back
downtown.”
    “Did she drive you there?”
    Rex nodded. “She wasn’t happy to
see me,” he said. “But after we talked about things for a while at her place,
she suggested we go and have something to eat. We were walking down the street
and this other woman came out of nowhere. She had this little plastic gun in
her hand—bright yellow with some black on the sides—and she tried to
electrocute me with it. She kept zapping me while Arlene yelled at me for showing
up at her house. She threatened to kill me if I ever do it again.”
    “What else do you remember?” I asked.
    The sides of his mouth crawled into
a sleepy smile. “I remember a nice man in the front seat and me in the back.”
    “What happened to your car?” I asked.
“Did you take a taxi to her house?”
    He winced. “Man, this hurts.” He
reached for the back of his head, but the IV stopped his arm about half way up.
“I need more pain pills.”
    “Do you want me to get the nurse?”
    His eyes dropped to the remote
control on the bed. “Push the big button,” he said. “The red one.”
    After I alerted the staff, I
repeated my question about the blue sedan.
    Rex squinted. “The blue what?”
    “The car,” I said. “The one you—”
    “The battery died. Stupid piece of
crap wouldn’t start.”
    “Is that why you left it at Java
& Juice?”
    He stared at the images pulsing on
the television.
    “Rex?” I said after a few seconds.
    “What?” His gaze slowly rotated until
our eyes locked.
    “The car?” I said. “The battery
died so you abandoned it?”
    He nodded, but the grimace on his
face deepened from the pain. “Yeah, it died,” he said, lowering his voice to a sodden
rasp. “That’s why I took a taxi to see Arlene. I figured that would be better
than trying to find my way around. I don’t do so good with following directions.”
    “That makes sense. What happened
when you arrived at her house?”
    His eyelids lowered again as he
yawned. “When you arrived where?”
    “No,” I said. “When you got
to Arlene’s. What happened?”
    His head rolled to one side and his
lips moved silently. “I think she was surprised,” he said finally. “She knew
who I was. And she remembered my brother telling her things about me.” He
paused and blinked a few times. “And that thing hurt bad when it zapped
me! I mean really bad! I stumbled on something and tried to reach for a
tree, but it was too far away.”
    “That’s when you fell into the
fence,” I said. “You must’ve blacked out after the wrought iron punctured your
side.”
    “I don’t know,” he mumbled.
    “How long were you with Arlene?” I
asked. “From the time you arrived at her house until she drove you downtown?”
    He blinked.
    “Was it ten minutes?” I suggested. “Or
twenty?”
    He thought for a moment before
estimating that two or three hours had elapsed between his knock on the woman’s
front door and the glint