Hide & Find (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

shoulder throbbed where I’d been grazed by a bullet, and my calf ached. I’d thought I was healing well, but I had also been too lazy the past week or two. My stamina was slipping. 
    A thundering crash sounded from the mechanic’s bench running the length of the shorter east wall, and Dwayne leaned on his sledgehammer for a moment to swipe his forearm across his brow. He was faring better than I was, and he had decades on me.
    I gritted my teeth and hefted the handles of a wheelbarrow, prepared to trundle it out across the rough, frozen ground to the burn pile. But at the opening where the hangar-style rolling door had been pushed out of the way, I caught sight of Loretta out of the corner of my eye. She waved frantically from the base of the stairs to the loft.
    I gladly dropped the weight and trotted over to her. Loretta cast sneaky glances around and grabbed my hand. “Come on,” she hissed and tugged me up the stairs.
    Three bedsteads with painfully lumpy, thin mattresses were spaced evenly down the length of the loft, separated by short cupboards with drawers on one side and a door on the other. The room had the air of an abandoned barracks, stopping just shy of a jail. Dust swirled in the gray light filtering through the small, high windows, one per bed. Personal belongings had long since been removed, but the function of the space was clear. Apparently, mechanics didn’t rate much in the way of creature comforts.
    Emmie was sprawled on the last bed, trying to hold down the curling edges of some kind of mat with her arms and legs. My first thought was bedbugs, then I remembered that they would have died off long ago without the detritus of human occupants to feast on.
    Clarice  leaned over the bed too, scowling, completely absorbed. Loretta led me down the narrow aisle.
    “What have you girls gotten into?” I asked.
    “Shhh,” Loretta dug her fingernails into my arm.
    I winced and wondered if extreme emotional swings and bizarre behavior were part of alcohol withdrawal and recovery. She looked a little unhinged.
    “What?” I asked again, even louder, unable to hide my impatience.
    Clarice pointed to the mat on the bed.
    Blocky blotches — flesh colored, white, black, a few brown roundish spots. I touched a corner. Thick paint on canvas. Crackles — either from age or from being rolled up too long.
    “She’s naked,” Emmie said.
    I blinked, swallowed, glanced at the little girl then back to the painting. That was news to me. “It’s a woman?” I croaked.
    Clarice emitted a muffled snort.
    “That’s her head and hair, and here’s her tummy. Her legs are crossed. She’s looking over her shoulder. That’s why her nose is big like that and you can only see one of her eyes.” Emmie spoke slowly and pointed out each part, as though she was instructing a beginner-level anatomy class.
    “Maybe one of the mechanics was taking a painting correspondence course, and he was practicing. He certainly wasn’t very good.” I tried hard to put a palatable spin on the concept of an abstract nude and was suddenly immensely glad none of the boys had made their way upstairs yet. “Are there any others?”
    “Several.” Loretta lifted a knee onto the counter of the tiny galley kitchen kitty-corner from the last bed. With a quick wriggle, she was standing, straddling the sink and reaching into the highest shelf of the overhead cabinet. “I was just checking the cupboards when I found them.” She drew three rolled tubes out of the narrow space one at a time and handed them down to me.
    I stood there, clutching the canvas scrolls to my chest. While they were a curiosity, to be sure, I didn’t want to risk finding out that the mechanic’s skill had improved by unrolling them in front of Emmie.
    Loretta hopped off the counter in a remarkably agile move. We adult women locked eyes over the top of Emmie’s head and came to an immediate and silent consensus.
    “I’ll take these back to the mansion,” I