Illegally Iced Read Online Free PDF

admitted. “But that doesn’t change what happened this morning, Suzanne. I saw what I saw.”
    “But did you really? Sure, James and I were talking about the smoke from his fire coming into my shop, but we weren’t yelling at each other, were we?”
    She considered it, and then shook her head. “Maybe not, but you can’t deny that you weren’t very happy with him.”
    “Of course I can’t,” I said. “But we were friends. He explained to me that he couldn’t move his fire pit without risking burning the park down, and I went back into my shop when I understood that he couldn’t make my problem go away. At no time after that did I ever approach him or even say another word to him, let alone stab him.” I knew that Gabby had her finger on the pulse of the town, and if I asked her the next question on my mind, it was more than likely that she’d be able to answer it, and it might even distract her for a second. “Have you heard yet exactly what James was stabbed with?”
    “One of his wrought-iron skewers,” Gabby said, clearly pleased to have the information before I did. “Evidently he’d just made it this morning.”
    “How can they be sure of that? I have a couple of his skewers in the donut shop myself.” I’d experimented with using them to flip the donuts in the fryer halfway through their cooking cycles, but I’d quickly gone back to my old reliable method of using thick wooden chopsticks instead. As a matter of fact, the skewers were both still in one of my kitchen drawers. Would that help my cause, or put me into deeper trouble?
    “What do the ends of them look like?” she asked.
    I thought about the long and thin black iron tapers and the boxed ends that made them easier to hold. “They are both diamond-shaped,” I admitted. “Why do you ask?”
    “Then you really should be in the clear. These had curlicue circles at the top, and he told me that he’d just started using the new pattern today and was still experimenting with the design.”
    That was an interesting fact. “When did he tell you that?”
    “I walked over to his demonstration when he first got started this morning,” Gabby admitted. “I’ve always liked James, and I wanted to say good morning to him.”
    That particular friendship was news to me. “Really?”
    She must have sensed something in my voice. “Yes, really. Is it that hard to believe that a handsome young man would find pleasure in my company?”
    I couldn’t stop myself from blurting out, “Are you telling me that the two of you were dating ?”
    “Of course not.” She looked flustered by the question. “I commissioned him to make me a set of those handsome bookends out of railroad tracks like he made you. I’ve admired them since you got a set yourself. Unfortunately, he never got around to making a pair for me.”
    “Gabby, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to imply…”
    She stepped in when I failed to come up with the words to explain just what I had been trying to say. “It’s all right, Suzanne. I don’t have that many friends left these days, and I just lost one of them. Now that I think about it, I believe you when you say that you didn’t do anything to James. I know that you two were friends as well, even if you were having a rocky time of it today.” She paused, and then looked sad. “What were your last words to him, do you remember?”
    I wasn’t ever going to forget them. “I told him that if it ever happened again, he’d have to go to Hickory for his donuts for the rest of his life.”
    “How dreadful.”
    “Honestly, it could have been a great deal worse,” I said. “At least I smiled when I said it.”
    “I myself told him how lucky we all were to have him living in April Springs. He seemed pleased by the compliment.”
    “I’m sure that he was,” I answered, though I wondered if that was really what Gabby had told him. “So, we’re good, right?”
    “Right as rain,” she said.
    “Excellent,” I said. “I