Bloody Kin Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dwight was two years older than Rob, two or three inches taller, and at least thirty pounds heavier with wide shoulders, thick brown hair, and brown eyes. Where Rob seemed to have a reined-in intensity, Dwight appeared easygoing and uncomplicated. It was hard to reconcile Miss Emily’s boasts of all the difficult cases her son had solved up in Washington with this country-talking, lazy-looking man.
    Nevertheless, reclassified by Rob’s claim to kinship, she could sense a relaxing in the detective’s formality, a formality she hadn’t even realized was there until she felt the subtle shift in her status from suspected outsider to accepted one-of-us.
    “Mama called you, I reckon?” he asked Rob.
    “She did. And she’s going crazy because no one could tell her who’s been hurt.”
    “I’m with her,” Dwight Bryant said, “but he doesn’t seem to have any ID on him.”
    A small spare man appeared in the packhouse doorway, delicately brushing cobwebs from his immaculate gray suit. L.V. Pruitt, the county coroner, blinked in the bright March sunlight, nodded to Rob and spoke to Dwight in the hushed tones of a professional funeral director, which he was.
    “They’re bringing him out now. You’ll have to wait for a complete autopsy, but tentatively, and very tentatively, mind you, I would say a blow on the back of the head and then thrown down the stairs.”
    “Murder?” asked Kate incredulously.
    “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid so,” Pruitt said solemnly.
    “Any idea when?” asked the detective. The little undertaker was reluctant. “Now, Dwight, you know I’m no real pathologist.”
    “Oh come on, L.V., make a guess,” Dwight urged.
    “Well, judging from my experience, I’d think no earlier than eight last night and not much past four this morning. We’ll know more after they’ve had a look at him over in Chapel Hill.”
    The beep of a car horn drew their eyes to the top of the lane and they saw a young woman standing there watching them.
    “Who’s that?” Kate asked. Before Rob could answer, a bright purple Triumph whipped over the crest and skidded to a stop beside the girl, who got in after a momentary pause.
    “School’s out,” Rob murmured. He stepped forward to meet the iridescent little car, which jounced on down the lane and pulled up behind Pruitt’s sober black Lincoln.
    “You must have rushed those supervisors around on roller skates,” he told his mother.
    Emily Bryant thrust oversized, wraparound sunglasses into a tangle of brick-red curls, bounced out of the car, tugged down the tunic of a lavender plaid pantsuit, and said, “Don’t be impertinent, Robert. Hello, Kate. What a dreadful thing for you to come home to!”
    She held out her arms and embraced Kate warmly. “Oh, my dear, how skinny you’ve gotten! Don’t they feed you in New York? Bessie’s making pecan pies today. You just come home with me for lunch and we’ll start fattening you up again. You, too, Sally,” she said to the fairhaired girl who’d gotten out of the TR and shyly joined them. “Oh, no, that’s right. You have to find Mary Pat and— Kate! You haven’t met Sally yet, have you? Sally Whitley, Kate Honeycutt. Sally and Tom are helping out at Gilead while Tom goes to State. Isn’t Gordon lucky to have such a pretty young nursemaid for Mary Pat?”
    Dwight and Rob’s plump, nosy, gregarious mother had to be nearing sixty-five, but her energy was unflagging and only her shrewd eyes gave away her age. Kate knew better than to try to speak before Emily Bryant ran down, so she merely smiled at Sally Whitley and waited for Miss Emily to pause for breath, something she showed no signs of doing.
    “Oh, Dwight, good! I was so afraid it would be that Jamison man from the south end of the county and I don’t know him from Adam. Or else that lazy Silas Lee Jones and why Bo keeps him on—”
    There was a sudden stir of movement inside the packhouse and even Miss Emily fell silent as they all stepped back