A Thorn Among the Lilies Read Online Free PDF Page A

and sabotage anything.”
    There was a little more after that, but that was the main part. That was the part that made Carry happiest (and most embarrassed). I thought it must be weird, living her life now, just waiting for this boy to drop into it who is going to become her new boyfriend.
    By the time we left Madame Crystalle, I noticed a change in every one of us. Carry was in deep thought, probably about this new boy. My mother was in deep thought, probably about the stuff she was told that made absolutely no sense to anyone. Uncle Henry had changed because he found out he was allergic to incense. I was quietly cursing myself because I forgot to ask Madame Crystalle about the frog standing outside her shop, and Dewey had changed because he found out that, along with rugs and cats, there were also Persian people.

C HAPTER 4
    T hat night, Leah lay in bed unable to sleep. Her encounter with the psychic kept rolling around in her mind. What happened earlier had affected her more than she had thought. She didn’t really believe in psychics or the ability to “see the future” at all; in fact, she normally referred to it as “hocus-pocus gobbledygook.” But her ad hoc session with Madame Crystalle had been so intense, Leah couldn’t help but be touched by it.
    The problem was, the woman didn’t make any sense. Leah was a logical person, and there was no logic in what she’d been told. It was just a bunch of sketchy details without any definition. And to top it off, Leah kept going back to the fact that she had told Madame Crystalle on the phone she was a detective. That part made it a little too convenient for Leah’s liking.
    Leah remembered every word the psychic told her. She’d gone over the words at least fifty times in her head, and there was nothing there she could do anything with. None of it made any sense. Some of it was downright ridiculous and funny. A maniac tailor who deprives people of their sight. Now there’s an image that’s really hard to conjure up in your imagination. Something about finding a body in darkness with writing on it. The psychic had been unable to say anything about the writing at all.
    Yet, writing on a body found in darkness is pretty specific. They aren’t just things you pull out of your sleeves. So this was where Leah was torn into possibly believing the woman and attempting to follow up on the clues. But really, what clues did she have? She didn’t even have a name or place for a victim. Or any kind of context to put this into.
    It was the last piece of evidence Madame Crystalle had given Leah that made Leah consider trying to follow the sparse path of clues; it was the one thing that was tangible and possible to get something out of. The words on the sign: W ELCOME TO G RAY . . .
    It was a partial on a road sign. That should be traceable.
    This road sign was something Leah might be able to find. But so what if she did? She still had no idea what it meant.
    Did she even want to know what it meant? And sweet Jesus, if Police Chief Ethan Montgomery ever found out she was hunting around on a case with the sparse evidence she had been given from a psychic, he’d have a heyday with it.
    It would probably be the day before Leah had to start looking for a new job.
    â€œI guess you ain’t goin’ to get much sleep tonight,” she said to herself, deciding her best course of action at this point was to get up and go fix herself a mug of warm milk.
    Sliding her feet into her slippers, she stood from her bed and slowly padded her way down the hardwood floors into the kitchen. Opening the fridge, she pulled out a carton of milk. She closed the fridge door and immediately her pulse went up twenty notches and she nearly jumped right out of her slippers. Hank had moved beside the opened door while she was peering in the fridge.
    â€œGod, Hank, you tryin’ to give me a coronary?”
    â€œSorry. I guess I’m a little