Eleven Little Piggies Read Online Free PDF

people who are stressed out of their minds. Of course, I was much more understanding about this when it was the Kester brother attacking Ray than I had been when Arlo was shouting insults at me. Anyway, I knew that when Ray quit ranting about this rank injustice, we would decide together how to handle the uppity Kester. We’re the police, after all. Unless somebody can prove malfeasance, we win most of our arguments.
    â€˜He says he’ll get me fired for gross incompetence. How dare I send my officers out there scaring the dickens – that’s what he said, “scaring the dickens” – out of his sister-in-law, telling her that her husband’s been shot? I should have checked with him first. Like everybody in Hampsted County has to check in with him for permission to die, or even talk about dying.’
    â€˜That does sound a little overbearing.’ I was listening with one ear while I Googled Kester & Robbins, reading off the screen that the firm specializes in corporate start-ups, tax law, and mergers. I read some of it to Ray. ‘Looks like they are kind of big Cahunas for little old Rutherford. The Kester on the masthead must be his uncle. Ethan was just a couple of years ahead of me in high school. He’d still be a junior partner, I think.’
    â€˜Uh-huh,’ Ray said. ‘But a junior partner with the right family name, in a firm that’s making a bundle off these green science guys that are all over us this year like ticks on a hound.’
    When Ray and I were growing up in Southeast Minnesota, Rutherford was a quiet market town where prices for hog bellies and feeder calves were featured on the noon news. There’s still plenty of farming going on in Hampsted County, but every year Rutherford – the town that we thought was stuck in its comfortable little rut forever – changes in front of our eyes. It’s getting more like the Twin Cities and Chicago, becoming part of one vast urban sprawl in which biotech and new energy sources are beginning to upstage agriculture.
    Maybe it’s all good, but so many quick changes make people uneasy. Around Rutherford lately, a lot of conversations end with somebody saying, ‘Where’s it all going to end?’
    â€˜So what did you say to pushy Ethan?’
    â€˜I said, “You’re only ten minutes away. If you think we’ve made a mistake, why don’t you come over here and check it out?” I gave him the address and he made it in eight minutes.’
    â€˜And?’
    â€˜He was in a Cadillac El Dorado and the tires were smoking. I led him to the body; he made a couple of choking sounds, and went into the woods and began beating up on an oak tree. Oddest reaction I’ve ever seen – punching and kicking this big strong tree. Clint helped him bandage his hands afterwards – he wouldn’t let me touch him.’
    Ray sounded even gloomier over the next part of his story. ‘When he settled down he started talking lawsuits again – saying this is no way to notify the family, lucky you didn’t give that poor woman a heart attack. Says he’s going to take this right to the top, it won’t end here . . . and so on.’
    â€˜Well, you know, people look for somebody to blame.’
    â€˜Uh-huh. But Ethan seems to be a bottomless pit of anger and he wants to pull the whole police force in there with him.’
    â€˜That’s very well stated, actually, Ray. And since it is a bottomless pit, let’s leave Ethan to wallow in it while we get on with our jobs. Did Pokey say when he’ll probably do the autopsy?’
    â€˜Well, for a change he didn’t say dawn tomorrow. In fact, he said, “Hell, the body was frozen stiff and the crime scene hopelessly compromised by the time I got here, so no hurry. Wait till I see how many appointments I’ve got to move around and I’ll let you know”.’
    â€˜OK, Ray.