1 A Small Case of Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

more about it, I’ll ask Jill for Rick’s number. You can call him but be discreet. Your kids have already lost a mother. You’re all they’ve got left.”

Chapter Two

    “Think.”
    “I’m tired of thinking,” Donny told his father. “I don’t know where it is.” In the same breath, he asked, “Are we going to McDonald’s for breakfast?”
    Joshua observed the two customers in line ahead of them at Chester Drug Store before checking the time on his watch.
    His family had wasted most of the morning searching for Donny’s asthma inhaler, which had been missing for twenty-four hours before he said anything about it. Their search turning up nothing, Joshua took Donny to the pharmacy to get the prescription Tad had called in.
    On the corner of Carolina Avenue and Fifth Street in the heart of town, Chester Drug Store had been owned and operated by the Martin family since 1960 in spite of business ownership in the Ohio valley being in a state of constant turnover since the closing of the steel mills.
    While waiting to pick up the medicine, Joshua acknowledged the pharmacist’s smile with a wave of his hand.
    He had recognized her instantly. Her thick, strawberry-blond hair was lighter and shorter. Freckles were still splashed across her upturned nose. Along with her pretty feminine features, she still exuded enough sexuality to stir his hormones.
    She was Beth Davis.
    Joshua had almost married her twenty years earlier when he was Oak Glen High School’s star quarterback and she was a varsity cheerleader. They were “the couple” in high school until Joshua went out into the real world and left her behind.
    Shuffling forward with the line, Joshua studied the changes he could see in Beth since the last time he had seen her. Tiny lines had formed around her mouth. There were dark circles under her eyes that he didn’t recall noticing in their youth. The pink glow in her cheeks seemed to have been extinguished.
    The grin she shot in his direction didn’t reach her eyes.  Despite the air conditioning that caused goose bumps to form on his forearms, Joshua saw beads of sweat on her forehead and upper lip.
    With the air of a woman to be reckoned with, Bridgette Rawlings Poole blew into the store. She willed customers out of her way to fly to the front of the line.
    In her late thirties, Bridgette Rawlings Pool didn’t hold her age well. Her crimson hair and huge silicone breasts attached to her malnourished body added to her outrageous appearance.
    Her entrance interrupting thoughts of breakfast, Donny adjusted his glasses to watch the entertainment that commenced when Bridgette Poole slapped her hand onto the counter. “I want my prescription.”
    “I’ll be with you in a minute,” was Beth’s response.
    “I don’t have a minute,” the customer snapped.
    Lured by the threat of a scene, Jan Martin came out of her office located in the back of the pharmacy. The store manager was a rail-thin woman with brown wire-framed glasses perched on her nose and long copper-colored hair tied back with an elastic band. She was dressed in a pair of khaki pants a size too big and a plain, white, button-down shirt.
    Jan’s father had died of cancer before her birth. After Joshua’s parents’ deaths, the two children had shared much time together under Frieda Thornton’s care while Jan’s mother ran the Martin’s family business.
    Beth’s smile resembled a sneer. “I’ll be right with you, Mrs. Poole, as soon as I’m finished with this customer.” Ignoring Bridgette’s eyes that were wide with outrage, the druggist returned her attention to her previous customer. “Now, that is erythromycin—”
    “Ms. Davis! I never—”
    Jan slapped a bag onto the counter and stated in a low, yet pleasant, tone, “Your prescription is right here, Mrs. Poole.”
    Bridgette snatched up the bag and checked the pharmacy slip stapled on the front.
    While giving her pharmacist a warning glance, Jan punched the buttons on the