All Murders Final! Read Online Free PDF Page A

everything. Said it was junk. So I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

    If she’d told me all of this last night, I’d have lost more gracefully. And I wished she’d arranged for an early morning pickup. Then she would be the one who found Margaret, and I’d be here, doing something other than seeing Margaret’s cold, dead body over and over in my mind.
    I waited to see if she’d type more. When she didn’t, I clicked on her profile picture. She had bleached blond hair, with dark roots and purple ends. Wrinkles framed her eyes, as did her thick black eyeliner. I clicked through her photos. She lived in a modest ranch, if anyone could call any home modest in this high-priced area, where the cheapest homes were almost four hundred thousand dollars. There were pictures of her with some twentysomethings, but none with a man. She didn’t have anything marked on her relationship status. Most of her posts had to do with games she played and pictures of puppies. Nothing else to learn about her there.
    Every time my phone chimed, I cringed. But no further pictures came in. I berated myself for not remembering the user name of whoever had sent the picture. It wouldn’t be much to go on, but it might help. I closed my eyes more than once and tried to do some deep breathing, but nothing would pop the user name back into my consciousness.
    As the afternoon wore on, I checked the local online news several times, but the story of Margaret’s death hadn’t broken yet. I was amazed that the police had somehow managed to keep it quiet for this long. I worried about Margaret’s family, about how shocking the news of her death would be. I was so antsy, I couldn’t stand myself. Staying busy seemed to be my best option.

Chapter 4
    I grabbed my coat and a couple of sturdy tote bags. I’d go hit the last thirty minutes of the rummage sale at the Congregational church. Walking across the town common to the church, I wondered if anything good would be left. Sometimes going late meant losing out on the best stuff. Other times I’d managed to negotiate rock-bottom prices on great items as sellers packed up their things.
    Across the common I spotted a woman and a well-dressed man loading bags of stuff into the trunk of a car. Hennessy Hamilton. I wouldn’t have known it was her from this distance, but the doors on her car had large bright pink H s painted on them to promote her consignment shop, Hennessy’s Heaven. I knew that underneath the large H , her slogan, “Where all your shopping dreams come true,” was painted on the car. You’d have to be dead to miss it. I winced as I thought of Margaret.
    There were still a lot of cars parked around the common and people going in and out of the church. Drat. That didn’t bode well for my bargain hunting. I trotted down the steps to the church basement and hung my coat on a hook in the hallway outside the fellowship hall, where the sale was being held. I kept the totes with me. At this kind of sale, where everything was paid for at the end, it was easier to set my finds in the totes than try to juggle an armful of things or depend on people having plastic bags available to put stuff in. At bigger events, like outdoor flea markets or sales at convention centers, I took a collapsible wire cart with wheels.
    As I entered the fellowship hall and looked at the people milling about, I wondered if the news of Margaret’s death was out. At the first table I had my answer. A woman was crying and blowing her nose. “They should have canceled the sale. It’s not right being here when poor Margaret is dead,” she said to a woman standing next to her.
    â€œShe wasn’t even a member of our church,” the woman replied.
    â€œBut she was a member of our community. A godsend for this town.” She choked back a sob. “What will we do now?”
    The woman next to her rolled her eyes and moved away.
    I