Framed For Murder (An Anna Nolan Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

turned to look at her. “Damn,” he said, turning back to the sink, “this is so totally bizarre. Are the police saying it’s murder?”
    I watched his back from my chair. “No, they’re waiting for the coroner’s report before they say anything.”
    Ben was silent as he wiped down the counter. “Could it have been suicide?” he asked with a shrug.
    “I don’t see how, honey. Not unless he walked there – there was no car around. And why would he choose to kill himself in the middle of nowhere?”
    Ben let out the dish water and dried his hands. “I guess not, then,” he said, putting down the towel and turning to me. His face was calm. “Ready for our walk?”
    “Sure. Thanks for finishing up.”
    Later that night, I had a nightmare. In my dream, I was back in the bush crouched over Jack’s body. I looked up and saw Ben emerging from the trees with a gun in his hand, his face contorted with rage. There was blood dripping from his hands, and he wiped a long streak of it across Jack’s face. Jack’s body started to spasm and blood gurgled from his mouth. I ran away into the trees, and woke with my heart racing. As I lay in bed gasping, I could hear Ben’s soft snores drifting down the hallway.
    Ben’s confession that he had hated his father, coupled with that dreadful expression on his face, must have really disturbed me. I knew that Ben had resented his father growing up, and I didn’t blame him in the least for that. But hatred? That was a powerful emotion. I had never hated Jack and, heaven knows, he had broken my heart often enough to give me cause. But I had made my peace with our marriage and with the trouble his cheating had caused me, and now I mostly felt indifferent when I thought about Jack.
    I sat up to rearrange my pillows into a more comfortable position and lay down again, but it was no use – I was too restless get back to sleep. Unwanted thoughts kept careening around my head like the ball in a pinball machine. I turned on my bedside lamp and picked up a framed picture of Ben and me from my side table. It had been taken at the beach when he was eight years old. In the picture, I was sitting on a towel smiling up at the camera as Ben crept up behind me with a plastic pail full of water and a big, mischievous grin lighting up his face. He was missing a front tooth, and his goofy expression always made me smile. I mentally compared that face with the angry young man I had seen today, and shook my head. If it hadn’t been for that stupid dream, the thought of Ben shooting Jack would never have crossed my mind. There, I admitted it. I was afraid that Ben had shot Jack.
    The idea was ludicrous. Where would Ben get a gun from, anyway? He was just nineteen – still a kid. He was my son. He couldn’t have done such a terrible thing. And there was absolutely no proof that he had done anything, nothing but an ugly suspicion brought on by a bad dream. No, I was just going to have to bury that thought deep within my sub-conscious and never let it torture me again.
    In the end, I had to get up and go look at Ben asleep in his bed, his face so young and vulnerable, before I could get back to sleep.
     
    Chapter Five
     
    Saturday morning the telephone woke me up. I raised my head to squint at the clock-radio beside my bed. It was 8 AM.
    “Hello?” I mumbled into the receiver.
    “Anna Nolan?”
    “Yeah, who’s this?”
    “Mrs. Nolan, my name is Larry Hubert. I’m a reporter with the Calgary Record. I want to do a background story on your ex-husband, Jack Nolan – a look at his personal life, his family and friends – that sort of thing. Can I ask you some questions?”
    “No comment,” I said, banging down the phone. I had no desire to be quoted as the “grieving ex-wife” in the newspaper. What a hell of a way to be woken up in the morning. I got out of bed and shuffled down the hallway to see if Ben was still there. The bed was made and he had already left.
    I decided to lay low that