High Stakes, a Hetty Fox Short: a Hetty Fox Short Story (Hetty Fox Cozy Mysteries Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

trip. But this day the farm fields filled with corn and beans stretching skyward whizzed past my window. Telephone poles did likewise, but the highway still seemed to stretch on forever.
    At last, I reached the Weaverton city limits. The town boasts a population of some twenty-thousand people. There were those who suspected the only way city fathers reached that exalted number was to include cats and dogs in the population count.
    Either way, I pulled my car into the sheriff’s  parking lot on Elm Street and took a deep breath. I didn’t know how I was going to convince Oberton  that I had managed to track down the tennis shoes — or to explain about the gun which had turned up on an overhead shelf in the bedroom closet. I suspected he had honed his senses into a crack lie detector device over his years on the police force. Still, I climbed out of my car and set off on my mission determined to succeed.
    The sheriff’s department was housed in a practical looking yellow-brick building, built all on one floor and topped with a brown roof. I pulled open the door and immediately came upon the front desk, where Alan Jessop was on duty. He glanced up from some paperwork he’d been sorting through. “Hetty, how you doing?”
    The greeting told me I’d probably been in these offices at least once too often. “Hi, Alan. Is Detective Oberton in?”
    “He is, but he’s terribly busy. Today’s homicide and all.” Hand gestures accompanied his words making it clear that people here were feeling a bit swamped.
    “Will you ask him if he would meet with me, please? I have some news.”
    “You haven’t solved this thing, have you?” he asked, suspiciously.
    “I just need to speak with Oberton, that’s all.”
    The sergeant  never took his eyes from my face as he reached out, grabbed his phone, and rang his boss. “Sir, Hetty Fox is out in reception. Says she needs a word.”
    He listened silently for a moment or two. “I know, sir. I told her. But she is insistent.”
    He replaced the receiver. “Go on back. You know the way.”
    The officer pushed the buzzer, which undid the lock. I swung open the railed barrier and stepped off down the hallway.
    I found Oberton seated behind his desk, which was buried under stacks of paper. The detective did me the courtesy of standing when I walked into his room, which I found to be a charming, old-fashioned gesture. “Hetty, what’s dragged you all the way over here?”
    “Well, I got to chatting with Megan after you left, and with my pushing her and all, which you hadn’t time to do earlier, I learned a fact that proved helpful.”
    Oberton lowered his large frame back into his chair and pointed me toward a seat across from him. “Which is…?” he asked.
    “It turns out one of her neighbors, a Lester Potter by name, worked at the high school with Mazor. Potter’s the principal there.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    “Anyway, I was out collecting donations for our library today. So I decided to stop by his house. Since he is an educator, I thought he might see a library as a cause he could endorse.”
    Oberton’s eyebrows drew together in concern. “Hetty, where are you going with this?”
    “Well, I know how you folks have to follow all sorts of rules and such, so I thought I might lend  you a hand and step past those sorts of restrictions.”
    “And you did what?”
    “I sort of poked around in his house.”
    “With his permission?”
    “With his wife’s.”
    “Where did you go?”
    “The bathroom. It was upstairs, so I took a stroll through their bedroom. And guess what I found?”
    “I don’t know. What did you find?”
    “A pair of Redeautte tennis shoes, size nine.”
    His head jerked back. “How did you know about those?”
    “I can’t recall.”
    “If one of my men has loose lips….”
    “Relax. Your men are fine. I doubt they’d tell me to turn around if I were headed straight for a black hole. But I have developed my own sources. Also know,” I