Joyce & Jim Lavene - Taxi for the Dead 02 - Dead Girl Blues Read Online Free PDF Page A

evil and would like me to stop working for him too.”
    “Really? He knows you’re dead, right? What does he think would happen if you stopped working for Abe?”
    “I don’t know. He says he wants to remember who he is so he can save me from Abe.”
    As we spoke, I caught a hint of gold glitter on the ground. When I reached down for it, it was a partially smoked cigarette. There were several others close to it, as though the smoker had stood here for a while. Maybe waiting for Harold.
    “See if you can find a plastic bag in the shop, will you?” I asked Debbie.
    “What did you find?” She glanced into my hand. “ Eww . Old cigarette butts? That’s nasty.”
    “Just get a bag, will you?”
    While she went for the plastic bag, I shuffled through other debris—a few drink cups from the local coffee house, and a wrapper from a bagel. Probably from the same place, though there wasn’t a bag.
    “I found some napkins too.” Debbie handed them to me without touching my hand. “You’d better put those away and go inside for some hand sanitizer. Why do you think the cigarette butts are important?”
    I used some of the napkins to separate the butts from the cup and wrapper. It wouldn’t work for police procedure, but my evidence didn’t have to be admissible in court. It was enough to give us a place to start that had nothing to do with magic snakes.
    “Find anything?” Brandon asked from the other side of the crime scene tape. “I thought I’d have the body to work on by now.”
    In the pale light, he looked more like a movie-style zombie than any of the rest of us. His skin was so pale as to be almost transparent. He was as light as Abe was dark. When I’d first met him, I thought he was a teenager—short, thin, with the narrow build of a much younger man.
    He didn’t look his forty-two years, sixty-one if you counted the time he was dead as well. He was another LEP like me. Abe had taken him from being a murdered stockbroker and made him his morgue attendant.
    “You know there are snakes all over, inside and outside this man, right?” Debbie asked with a toss of her dark brown hair.
    Brandon rubbed his hands together and smiled. “I know. I can’t wait to get started.”
    “But how are you going to—?” Debbie shuddered. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
    “So he’s ready to go?” Morris asked.
    “Yeah.” I put the plastic bag in my pocket. “I’m not looking any closer at Harold the Great until the snakes are gone. See you later, Brandon.”
     

Chapter Five
     
    We picked up an older green Ford Festiva from one of Abe’s workers to use until the van was repaired. It ran like a thirty-year-old car and had bald tires. But it would have to do. I hoped we wouldn’t have any pickups before the van was back.
    I dropped Debbie off at her house. It was dark, but a welcoming porch light was shining. Her cabin was pretty, like one of those they use in the travel brochures. Debbie and Terry had kept it well-maintained. There were colorful flowers on the front overhanging porch, and the grass was green and manicured.
    Debbie’s kids, Raina and Bowman, always had some sports equipment outside that just seemed to add the right touch. It said a family lived here.
    “Are you sure you won’t come in for a minute?” Debbie asked as she got her umbrella and handbag.
    I knew she wanted me to talk to Terry and figure out what was wrong with him. Sometimes I tried to help her out when he went through another change. Tonight, I was just too tired. We both knew there was something really wrong with him, but it wasn’t something a doctor could fix. I didn’t want to see it any more than I wanted to look at Harold’s dead body.
    “You know, it’s late, and I’m really beat. Kate and Addie will be waiting for me.”
    “Are you going to ask Lucas about killing Harold?”
    “Not if you mean ask him if he killed Harold. I might ask him what he thinks about someone being killed with magic snakes.