Free A Candidate For Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mysteries Book 2) by LYNN BOHART Page B

not only lonely, but embarrassed by her financial situation.
    My eyelids began to droop, and I dozed off, only to be jerked awake a few moments later by the musical tones of the song, Rock Around the Clock . It had been the ringtone on my mother’s cell phone before she died, and I came suddenly awake.
    No one would claim my life was normal. But one of the strangest parts about it was that during Martha’s murder investigation, my deceased mother had begun calling me on her cell phone. At first, it had totally freaked me out. But in the end, she had helped to keep me safe during those dark days, although her cell phone had been destroyed in the process. So I was surprised to hear her ringtone on my phone.
    I sat up and grabbed my phone, but this time my hand shook as I answered it. “Hello.”
    “Julia!” my mother snapped. “What’s happening? Are you okay?”
    My excitement at hearing from my mother again was cut short when I realized she was repeating April’s question.
    “What? You, too? What’s the big deal? I’m fine.”
    “What d’you mean, you too?”
    My mother had been a big smoker and had died from emphysema. For as long as I could remember, she spoke in a husky, Lauren Bacall voice, with a slight mid-western accent.
    “April just called and asked me the same thing. What are you two seeing that I can’t?”
    “I don’t know what April saw, but I just had an overpowering sense that you were in trouble again. There was lots of commotion. Barking. Squawking. Why would that be? What did you get yourself into this time?”
    My mother and I had always sparred. It’s what we did when she was alive, and apparently, things hadn’t changed much just because she was dead. “Why do you always assume that I’m the one who gets me into trouble? Maybe it was someone else’s fault.”
    “Are you kidding?” she snapped. “Don’t forget that just a few weeks ago you were being held prisoner in the basement of a church because you’d gotten involved in a murder investigation.”
    I sighed. “No. I haven’t forgotten. But this time someone tried to kill Dana Finkle.”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Who cares about that?”
    “Mother!”
    “You don’t like her any better than I did. By ‘tried to kill,’ I assume you mean they failed.”
    “Yes,” I replied.
    I told her about Trudy and my email account. My mom had been pretty tech savvy before she died.
    “Wow,” she exhaled. “That’s got to be a piece of bad luck.”
    “That’s just what Goldie said,” I commented. “But you mentioned squawking. Did you hear Ahab?”
    “I don’t know if it was Ahab,” she said. “I just heard a bird squawking.”
    “I’m not a target, Mom. But I think someone was trying to set me up for the fall.”
    “Okay, Button,” she said with relief, using my childhood nickname. “Good to know. Well, not good for Finkle’s campaign assistant, but you know what I mean.”
    “Yes, I do. Thanks. I just haven’t heard from you since Christmas. It’s good to know you’re still looking out for me.”
    “Always,” she said. “Now, I have to go.”
    “Mom.”
    “Nope, gotta go. Take care of yourself.”
    And with that, she was gone. I was left to look at the cell phone as I had so many times before, befuddled at how she could contact me from the other side and frustrated that I never got enough time to talk to her.
    I slammed the phone back down on the bedside table and flopped back onto my pillow, eyes wide open, my brain humming.
    Two warnings in a matter of minutes, along with Elizabeth’s pictograph in the bathroom mirror. How could I sleep after all of that?
    I couldn’t.
    I needed chocolate.

CHAPTER NINE
     
    Chocolate was my alcohol. It relaxed me and made me feel comforted. I glanced at my alarm clock. It was now 2:20 a.m. I sighed and threw my legs over the side of the bed. There were no sweets in my apartment because I was trying to lose a few pounds now that I had an admirer. But the thought of