Indivisible Read Online Free PDF Page A

ambulance.
    Mary shuddered. “It reminds me of Bob.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “It’s the suddenness. One minute things are one way, and the next everything is changed.”
    Tia looked at Jonah, standing with his back toward her, hands at his hips. “I can imagine.” She turned away, set the paper-wrapped stand in the back, and closed the hatch. “Is Magna there to help you unload?”
    Mary nodded. “I’m stopping by the cemetery first.”
    “Tell Bob we all miss him.”
    Mary smiled, tearful again. “It’ll go to his head.”
    Tia looked up and caught Jonah watching. She hesitated, then approached as the driver closed the ambulance doors and climbed into the cab.
    “How is he?”
    “Too ornery to know what’s really going on. I’ll check in with him and let you know, unless …”
    “That’s fine. I’d appreciate it.” Sarge had been her business neighbor all the years she’d run the shop, but she had no personal relationship with him. He didn’t think much of her, though he’d adored her mother. Actually, that explained it.
    He thought the world of Jonah. Which just went to show. She turned and went back to her shop.

    Jonah jammed his hands into his pockets and headed for the office. He didn’t think Sarge was in critical condition, but worry gnawed. The old guy had no one at home to look after him and didn’t look after himself. It was only a matter of time before this or something else happened again. But how to tell a man like Sarge he can’t take care of himself?
    Ruth looked up, her pink nylon tank top accentuating the bulge where her arms expanded. “Nancy Barry wants to make a complaint against Hank Dale. She’s having her hair permed, then she’ll be back.”
    “Must be serious.”
    Ruth giggled. Though in her forties, Ruth had the rosy sort of face that made a giggle work.
    “Anything else?”
    “Stolen mailbox. Someone replaced it with an old shoe. If this was CSI , we’d collect DNA and nail the fool.”
    “It would only prove who’d worn the shoe, not how it got there or who took the mailbox.”
    Ruth eyed him. “That’s why you’re the chief. That rapier mind.”
    “Flattery will get you everywhere. Anything else?”
    “I’m worried about Sue. That husband—”
    “Okay, thanks.” Sometimes Ruth’s gossip yielded valuable information, but Sue was a fellow officer. Sam would become police business when and if they proved he’d committed a crime. The rest was up to them. “I’ll be in my office.” He had a slew of paperwork.
    Hours later, he closed out of the spreadsheet and chewed his pencil. The incident with the raccoons still bothered him. He’d searched every site he could find on rites involving animals. Sickening reading, but he’d not found one instance of animals being sewn together. There had to be significance to that methodology.
    He spit a wood fragment and stared at the chewed pencil, memory washing over him of Miss Matthews shaking her head. “You must be part woodchuck, Jonah.” The other kids had laughed, but he didn’t care because her dimples had peeked out when she said it, and he’d needed every smile he got.
    “Boy! When I find you …” Jonah pressed his eyes shut, seeing the dark shed, smelling the dust and grease and musty mouse scat. Small enough to fit into the hollows between the junk, he had faced the black widows more readily than the fist that held the belt. His only hope had been to hide longer than the meanness. Still and silent in the dark, he had thought about things like Miss Matthews’s dimples.

    Exhausted, Piper collapsed on a chair in Tia’s workshop, in the back room of her store. She pulled the band off her ponytail, and groaned. “How did Sarge do it?”
    Tia looked up from the table where she’d been drawing designs. “Have you been at the bakery this whole time?”
    “Well, I closed at two like always, but I noticed everything was looking dingy, especially the front, so I scrubbed it down, walls, windows,