Book Club Bloodshed Read Online Free PDF

away.
    "What's wrong?"
    Trudy hesitated. "Anne was seeing somebody..."
    "What?" Missy's ears perked up.
    "On the side, you know?"
    Missy would never have thought the respectable Anne Baxter would even be capable of an affair. She had the perfect husband, perfect family, perfect job. Her life was in order. Why would she want to mess all that up? Missy never understood the mentality of cheaters. She couldn't fathom doing that to anybody.
    "Who was he?"
    "I don't know..."
    Missy rolled her eyes. Trudy was always full of unsubstantiated rumors. She was the queen of them.
    "How do you know she was cheating then?"
    "I saw her at the grocery store once. She was sitting in the front of the...vehicle with someone. I didn't get a good look at him—"
    "Hold on, Trudy," Missy said. "Why would Anne be sitting in a car with some other man in front of her store where she knew everybody would recognize her?"
    "It was after hours, really late," Trudy said. "And it was in back. It was very strange."
    "What were you doing there?"
    "I was leaving work." Trudy worked at the card store at the end of the strip where the grocery store was. "I was there later than usual, because we had a big corporate audit coming up and I wanted to make sure the reconciliation was correct. I mean, I was real late, till almost one. The grocery store closes at ten on Sundays so I didn't understand why she'd be there."
    Missy nodded. That was suspicious. She very much doubted Anne was that involved in the day-to-day business of the grocery store, her role (as she was so fond of mentioning) was more strategic, so why would she be there after midnight and meeting up with a man in a car?
    It was a good lead, but Missy didn't know why Trudy was calling her to share.
    "Did you tell Tyler?"
    "No, that's why I'm calling you."
    Missy sat down at her dining room table. "Why not?"
    "You can't tell Tyler."
    Missy didn't want to make that promise. Even though their relationship was very awkward these days, Missy still considered Tyler a friend and as the chief detective of Grove City, she had to share important information that would help him in his investigation. Missy was generally a rule-follower, and withholding information from not only the police but her friend was a big no-no in her mind.
    "Trudy, if you don't know who it is, why can't I tell Tyler that Anne is having an affair?" She figured Trudy was afraid of breaking Anne's trust. But now that Anne was dead, wasn't finding the killer more important. Sometimes she didn't get Trudy. "Tyler can just act like he figured it out on his own. Nobody is going to point the finger at you."
    Trudy lowered her voice even more. It was barely a whisper now, but it came loud and clear through the phone.
    "Because of his car."
    "What about his car?" Missy was really confused now. Maybe Trudy had had a little too much wine tonight?
    "It was a cruiser."
    Missy nearly dropped the phone.
    "She was fooling around with a cop?"

Chapter Six
     
    Missy started pacing. Her mind churned with questions and possibilities.
    "You think this guy killed her? Maybe in a jealous rage, or maybe because she broke it off?" Trudy asked.
    "It's possible." She palmed her forehead. "I mean, it's much more likely than one of us doing it, right?"
    "That's what I was thinking. And, you know, with how she died..."
    Missy had already been thinking the same thing. Anne had died in a violent struggle. Somebody had smashed her head on the pipe stand or at least pushed her into it. Missy shuddered. It was a horrible way to die, your final moments spent in a blind panic as someone tried to...she knew what that was like. Six months ago, Gordon Cooper would have done the same to her were it not for that lovable Irish setter sleeping upstairs.
    "You've got a point." Missy tongued her teeth. She was trying to figure out what to do with the information. "I think we should tell Tyler."
    "We can't!" Trudy said. "What if it's him?"
    Missy almost laughed out loud at the