Free Who Left that Body in the Rain? by Patricia Sprinkle

didn’t look at the clock. . . .” Her voice followed her empty gaze to nowhere. Then her dark eyes flashed at Chief Muggins with indignation. “Why didn’t you find him sooner?”
    Chief Muggins didn’t have a drop of compassion in his veins. “Why didn’t you miss him when you woke up this morning?”
    “Because I slept so late. My pills always knock me out that way. Tansy was here before I got down.” Her hands started to tremble, then her whole body. I slid over and held her so close that the chattering of her teeth seemed like the chattering of my own.
    “What did you do then?” I asked softly. Maybe talking would soothe her.
    “I went out and worked in the yard. The rain had stopped in the night, and I needed to spread chicken manure on the garden, so it will be ready to plant. But it was so muddy, my shoes got ruined. I don’t think I’ll ever get them clean.”
    Charlie took an impatient step forward, wanting to stop talking about manure and mud and get back to her husband’s death. I waved him aside. Gwen Ellen needed to move at her own pace in assimilating things. Joe Riddley claimed the reason she was such a good gardener was because she lived at the same pace as plants, slow and steady. Skye hated to see her hot and dirty, but she was never happier than when digging in the dirt.
    Charlie was impossible to subdue. “I find it hard to believe, ma’am, that you got up and spent a whole morning in the yard without wondering where he was.” From the gloat on his face, Chief Muggins had already decided Gwen Ellen had taken Skye out on that deserted road, persuaded him to stand in front of her car, run over him, then gone home to bed and gotten up to spread chicken manure. In a minute he’d be asking to examine her Thunderbird. I was glad I’d glanced at it when we came in. It was clean and dent free.
    I was about to point out that he was talking to a woman who not only loved her husband but was also so tender-hearted, she had Skye take their infants for their shots because she couldn’t stand to see them hurt. Then I caught Joe Riddley’s glare, and shut my mouth.
    “Skye likes—liked—” Again Gwen Ellen struggled for control.
    Laura spoke over her shoulder, her voice deep and gruff. “Daddy often leaves—left for work before Mama got up. She’d have no reason to miss him.”
    “Why didn’t you miss him at the office?” Laura had drawn Chief Muggins’s fire. I could see the cogs that passed for his brains churning out a case against her instead of her mother.
    She fumbled in her pocket for a tissue and dabbed her nose before she answered. As she spoke, she turned toward him, but only slightly. “I was over at Hopemore Nissan all morning, training a new manager. I worked with him until after noon. When I got back to MacDonald’s and found Daddy wasn’t there, I assumed he’d come home for lunch. He does—did that sometimes, especially on Saturdays. He’d stay here to watch sports on TV; then he’d come back to close up.” She bit her lip and turned back to the window.
    Gwen Ellen gripped both my hands, and her eyes were tortured. “He had to lie out there all night in the rain. Can you believe that? Wouldn’t you think somebody would have found him sooner?” Tears finally streamed down her cheeks, and her shoulders shook. A second later she gasped, snatched her hands from mine, grabbed her abdomen, leaped to her feet, and dashed from the room. The slammed powder-room door muffled but did not cover up the sounds of desperate retching.
    “She has a nervous stomach,” Laura explained to the police chief.
    I heard Tansy hurry from the kitchen and speak worried words through the door.
    Chief Muggins wiggled his shoulders and swiveled his hips. “So, young lady, where were you last evening?” His voice was smarmy and insinuating.
    As Laura turned to face him, her eyes might have been pink but her voice was perfectly level. “I wasn’t killing my daddy, sir. I met my folks for