Free Eye of the Beholder (A Miss Henry Mystery Book 7) (Miss Henry Mystery Series) by Melanie Jackson Page A

through back channels, she and her former masters were still engaged in and endless and indecisive battle with her desire for freedom always pitted against their need to be sure that she wasn’t engaged in ideological heresy, or working for someone else who objected to their activities. The balancing act was often tiring but necessary if she was to keep her ex-employer believing that she was just a high-functioning idiot savant who had limited uses and that she was of no interest to anyone.
    Not that her many illegal talents, even if she were willing to indulge them, were doing her much good at the moment. She couldn’t threaten or intimidate a hurricane.
    “Damn.” This was absolutely the last time that she did a “country festival” art show. She did not like being out in the wilds with nothing but a tent between her—and her twenty-dollar t-shirts and a few small but precious canvasses— and the great outdoors where the woodbine and poison ivy twinethed. To heck with widening her audience in other regions of the country. She made good enough money on the local circuit back home in California.
    Juliet pulled out her phone and was relieved to see a couple bars in the window. She speed-dialed Raphael and was glad when he picked up , though the connection was predictably awful.
    “I’m stuck,” she announced.
    “I suspected as much,” Raphael answered. At least she thought that was what he said.
    “I’m afraid that you will have Marley as a houseguest for a couple days more.” There was no need to say this since it was clear she would not be getting home as planned and Raphael wouldn’t mind.
    “The cat and I are fine. I took the precaution of laying in extra tuna.”
    “Well, thank you—” She wasn’t able to finish though, since the connection was dropped on her expression of gratitude. The gods of telecommunication had ceased to smile on her and she was alone again.  Juliet plunged her phone back into her purse with unneeded force and turned toward the plate-glass windows where the storm raged under the few parking lot lights. “Swell.”
    A shadow fell over her as she mulled, and she glanced up at a lanky man in a chauffer’s uniform. He was tall though stooping and grey hair showed under his cap, which he finally removed, revealing a face as austere as any Old Testament prophet.
    “Ma’am.” He nodded his head . His eyes were tired and Juliet did not for one moment think that this was a pick-up. The modern cultural obsession with youth was tiring and she didn’t bother with trying to hide her age, especially while traveling. “My name is Jeffrey. I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with the unhelpful man at the desk and believe that I may be able to help.”
    The way he said Jeffrey made her think that it was a last name. Like Jeeves.
    “ Yes?” Juliet forced her face into pleasant lines. It took effort.
    “My employer, Mr. Markham, who is a patron of the arts and helped arrange the art festival, has also been delayed because of weather. If it happened that you were traveling west, I will be heading towards Keensboro to fetch Mr. Markham by car and could offer you a ride.”
    Juliet was not stupid. She knew all the horror stories of women who got into cars with strange men and disappeared off the face of the earth. But she was not just any woman . She was one with certain survival skills and also a burning desire to not spend another moment at the dank airport, so in that moment the idea seemed no more unreasonable, indeed world’s saner, than staying at the refugee camp of an airport where the coffee and soda and disposable diapers were running out. She had also heard of Mr. Markham, though they had not met. The eccentric philanthropist was supposedly a recluse.
    Juliet did a rapid assessment of the risks and found them acceptable. She had no idea where Keensboro was, but it was a place and it probably had a hotel or at least an inn that wasn’t full to flooding with