Caffeine & Killers (A Roasted Love Cozy Mystery Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

finally decided to come back in and headed to the
throw rug on my living room floor, right next to my favorite chair.
    "Okay, Thor. We’ll keep the usual ritual."
I flipped the TV on, and sighed.
    I was just in time to catch the local news and
watch Councilman Carpenter hammering away on his usual issues. He was
up for re-election and going full force in his campaign. Once again,
he was ranting about the homeless.
    While Carpenter insisted that law enforcement
wasn't doing enough, a photographer’s lens scanned an area of town
I'd never seen before. Several people shuffled into the range of the
camera. Across the street were two more who were exchanging money for
drugs. At least, that’s what the reporter said.
    My heart caught when I saw a woman with two small
children walk into the frame. The camera didn’t focus on them, but
I watched the three disappear behind a crumbling old building in the
background.
    I got up and went over to my laptop, and Googled
"homeless area West River New York." It gave me several
sites that looked promising and I clicked on one. Reading the
information, I realized that this old downtown area was just behind
the neighborhoods Daniel and I always drove through on our way to see
the Broadway shows.
    According to Councilman Carpenter, that area was
"dangerous and a blight on our city of law-abiding citizens."
He seemed to know the powers and limitations of local cops when it
came to drug laws. I didn’t personally know much about all that and
I made a mental note to ask Daniel what he knew.
    Tomorrow was my day off, and I began to put
together a plan. I got a map and looked up the GPS coordinates for
driving to the blighted area that Calvin Carpenter spoke of.
    "Well, Thor," I said, as the Doberman
raised his beautiful sleek head and looked at me, "We've got a
mission. And you're the one I'm trusting with my life."

Chapter Five
    The next morning, as I prepared for my trip to the
old downtown area, I wanted to get some information from Daniel. I
hit speed dial and there he was.
    "Laila! You're up early on your day off,"
he said.
    "Yup. I want to get as much as I can out of
my free day. You in a hurry?"
    "I've got a few minutes before I have to
leave," he said. "I have to be at a meeting for most of
today. There's some kind of training we have to go through. Seems
like there's always something new we have to learn. Why? Is something
up?"
    I paused. "Well – you know – the drug
users you try to save. Are they mainly heroin users?"
    Now it was his turn to pause. "No. Not
always. Some overdose on pills they find in the trash, or get from a
dealer."
    "In the trash?"
    "Sure. People are careless about throwing
away their outdated meds. The stuff ends up in dumpsters, and that’s
where the homeless search for food. I just had a case last night
where somebody took almost a full bottle of sleeping pills."
    "Where was that case? I mean, where in the
city?"
    "In this case, a mother living in a tenement
house had ransacked a dumpster outside a fast-food restaurant. She
told us that that was where she found the pills." He sighed.
"Seems she was a nurse at one time and recognized
benzodiazepines."
    "Benzo – what?"
    "Laila! What is this all about?" asked
Daniel. When I didn’t answer, he went on. "The autopsy report
isn’t back on John yet, if that’s why you're asking all these
questions."
    "I definitely want to know what the autopsy
shows as cause of death," I said. "Do drug users ever
combine sleeping pills and heroin?"
    "Yeah, of course. They'll combine anything
they can get their hands on." He paused again. "I’m
sorry, Laila. I have to get to work now. Don’t get yourself
involved in things you don’t know anything about. Just leave all
that to the professionals. Okay?"
    There were times when I wondered if Daniel was
psychic. Sometimes I thought he really could read my mind.
    "The drug world is entirely different from
the world you and I live in," he went on. "It's
concentrated in a small