Checkered Crime: A Laurel London Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

Pastor’s credit card, but it was all done in the spirit of giving and with a good heart and good intentions. Well…the good intentions part might be a little bit of a stretch, but the good heart thing was all true.
    Growing up an orphan was hard. Everyone always stared and pointed when they saw Trixie and the gang or even just a few of us walking to the Dollar Store or even the Gas-N-Go for a Slurpee, which was a real treat.
    Their sad eyes would always drop in a way that made me feel ashamed. I didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me and that was probably why I set out to prove them wrong.
    I was bound and determined to get out of Walnut Grove and find my path. Unfortunately, with no money, I had no other place to go. My grades in school didn’t offer me the skills I needed to go to college or get a big paying job and I’d needed Trixie’s help to pull strings to get me the job at Porty Morty’s.
    Without realizing my speed and the curves on River Road, I got lost in thought and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel trying to come up with a way to prove to everyone that I had changed.
    “Oh shit!” I swerved the Old Girl into the ditch, avoiding the shadow that had jumped out in front of me.
    My heart pounded a mile a minute. I threw the gear shift in park before I hopped out to see if I missed it or not. The only thing that big, jumping out of the woods, would have been a deer. Deer could do serious damage to a car.
    I rubbed the bumper of the car, happy to see there was no damage and I could just pull right back onto the road. I rubbed my forehead. I swore my mind was playing tricks on me.
    “Where the hell you going?” someone asked through a cough that was so loud it would rattle windows. “You almost hit me!”
    I turned toward the man who was definitely not a deer. His muscular arms were wedged into a black t-shirt. He pushed himself up from the ground. His five-foot-ten frame looked like it was built for action. Hurting someone kind of action. Not to mention he had on a pair of black leather gloves.
    “Oh my God!” I rushed over to him hoping to beg for his forgiveness because if I didn’t, it looked like he was going to do me in. “You aren’t a deer? Are you okay?”
    “Deer? Are you blind?” His hands could easily cover the top of a table. He swiped them down his jeans to get the dirt off of them.
    “I’m so sorry. I was in deep thought.” I put my hands out as I got closer to him. “It’s been a bad day. Bad week,” I murmured.
    His dark eyes glared at me. There wasn’t a hint of letting me off the hook anywhere on his stern face.
    “You shouldn’t be driving! I want to talk to your boss.” He jabbed his finger toward the Old Girl.
    “I…,” I stammered. “Boss?”
    He interrupted, “The least you can do is give me a ride to Louisville.” He passed me, walking toward the car.
    “That’s like thirty minutes away. And that’s on a good day if there aren’t any tractors on the road, and then it could take like an hour.”
    If he thought I was driving him to Louisville he was crazy, though it would give me the motivation to get some of those applications out.
    He stopped, his back to me. His upper body went up and down as he took a deep breath and released it. Still turned, he lifted up the hem of his black t-shirt over the waistband of his dark jeans and exposed the butt of a gun.
    “Do I need to say more?” He didn’t wait for an answer; he just kept walking toward the car.
    “Nope. No more.” I bit my lip and looked around. Give them what they want, I repeated what I had heard on cop television shows over and over in my head.
    A swift kick in his you-know-what with my foot and a hand chop to the head was probably not going to take this big guy down.
    I was about to be killed. I wasn’t going to be able to show Walnut Grove how I was going to turn my life around. No one was going to show up at my funeral. I could hear them now, “ She tried to con the wrong person