A Valley to Die For Read Online Free PDF Page A

Henry?” He turned his round face toward Carrie and winked. “I thought surely he’d be here before anyone else.”
    Carrie, who’d never blushed in her life, supposed Jason expected her to do so now. Instead, she stared at him, trying to show no emotion—then swivelled to stare at the front door instead as Henry opened it and walked in.
    She hadn’t locked the door after the early arrivals but was still surprised when Henry came in without knocking. It wasn’t like him, and his assured action startled her. This was her private home—her own space. She didn’t get up to greet him, held in her chair by a tongue-tied confusion she didn’t know how to settle. He acted like he owned the house. What he’d done reinforced Jason’s typically masculine insinuation, which she realized would get sparks out of JoAnne if she heard about it.
    Of course, it was possible she and Henry had been seen by someone from here the few times they’d gone to dinner together, even though they always chose restaurants in Bonny or Rough Creek. In her experience, if one person in the area knew anything, then everyone did.
    Well, who cared if they’d been seen? She was a mature adult. She did hope no one mentioned it to JoAnne, though. JoAnne would be quick to tell her what to do, and Carrie was far from eager to have any more discussions about Henry with her.
    Henry glanced around the room, then looked at Carrie. “JoAnne?” he asked and continued without listening for the obvious answer. “I went by her house, and there was no sign she’d come back. Do you think someone should check? You have a key to her house, don’t you, Carrie?”
    “Is she off wandering again?” Jason asked, sparing Carrie from the need to reply. “Let’s just get started. She’ll probably be here soon. Roger, you first. How did you and your cousin get along?”
    Roger leaned forward on the couch, rested his arms on his knees, and looked slowly around at all of them with his familiar grin.
    He’s enjoying this, Carrie realized with surprise, glad to turn away from worrying thoughts about Henry. Roger Booth, bless his heart, had an audience of move-ins. He knew quite well they were going to be entertained by how he told his story, and, far from being embarrassed, he was enjoying it!
    “Well, Herb and me,” Roger began in an exaggerated drawl, “we decided he needed a load of stone fer somethin’ ’er other, so we took his old truck and went to the Martinville quarry. They’ve about blasted away all the bluffs along Spider Crick. It had rained the night before and, let me tell you, that crick was milky with rock dust.
    “Fella there wasn’t the owner. Said the boss wasn’t around much. That was better fer us since this fella, he enjoyed talkin’. He’n Herb had seen one another at the café in town so they was like old friends, and we got along fine.
    “I asked if they might be lookin’ fer help, said I had a boy needed a job, and the fella said he was going to need a job soon hisself ’cause they was fixin’ to shut that quarry down. Said they’d about come to the end of that property and couldn’t buy more around there, which was no surprise, seein’ the mess they made of what they had.
    “So I said, was there any plans fer more quarryin’ someplace else? Maybe my boy could travel. He said he’d heard they planned a new quarry over th’line in Arkansas, but he didn’t want to travel that far from home if he could get work closer by.
    “Then Herb acted real interested in how they did the quarryin’ and asked the fella to show us how it all worked, said it seemed pretty dangerous to him what with the blastin’ and heavy rock. Since the fella was there by hisself and it was an off day fer customers, with them runnin’ out of stone and all, he was real proud to show us the works.
    “We’re right about the blastin’. There’s lotsa that, and lotsa dust. Mountains of busted rock, and machines big enough to move mountains. They got a