Murder at the Courthouse Read Online Free PDF

did.”
    â€œThat’s for sure.” Buck’s half smile disappeared. “And Little Osgood with some help from his friends will have to find out who.” Buck glanced back at Paul Osgood still talking to Hank Leland and made a growling noise down in his throat. “I can’t wait to read the paper tomorrow.”
    â€œMaybe Leland will go easy on him,” Michael said.
    â€œFat chance of that. Leland enjoys making us all look like idiots. He’ll have a field day with this.”
    Michael didn’t bother to argue the point. He’d seen a fewof his own quotes in the paper. Words that had sounded fine to his ears when he was speaking them often as not looked foolish in print. He steered the subject back to the murder. “You have any idea who might have shot the guy?”
    â€œThere are always suspects,” Buck said.
    â€œThen where are they?” Michael looked around at the thinning crowd. “I didn’t see anybody conveniently hanging around with a smoking gun in hand. No witnesses have run up claiming to have seen it all. And the victim isn’t talking.” Michael frowned at Buck. “Looks to me like we don’t have suspect one.”
    Buck shook his head. “You’ve been watching too many detective shows on television. Most murders are pretty simple affairs. I expect this one will be too.”
    â€œYou do? In what way?”
    â€œI don’t know. We might go out to the campgrounds and find some wife who just got tired of looking at the bozo’s face over breakfast, or it could be a jealous girlfriend, or the guy might have owed the wrong people money.”
    â€œThat doesn’t explain how he ended up getting shot on the courthouse steps,” Michael said.
    â€œMaybe he and the little woman were coming in to file for a divorce and they had one last doozy of an argument. Or he was running from somebody to get help and whoever he was running from caught up with him first. People get shot all the time.”
    â€œNot usually in the middle of a town like ours.”
    â€œThat’s so,” Buck said cheerfully. “But you wait and see. It’ll be something simple. We just have to find out what.” Buck looked back toward Hank and Paul still talking. “I’m going to have to go break that up.”
    â€œWatch that you don’t get knocked down yourself,” Michael warned. “Hank is quick with his pencil.”
    â€œHe won’t get nothing out of me. Just you make sure he don’t get nothing out of you either.”
    â€œHe can’t get anything out of me. I don’t know anything to tell him.”
    â€œDon’t worry, Mike. Somebody will have seen something.” Buck glanced around, then grinned a little. “In this town you can’t even scratch your backside on the courthouse steps without somebody seeing you, much less get shot.”
    Buck was right. Somebody had to have seen something. Michael looked past the people still clustered on the courthouse lawn to the other side of the street. Joe’s Barbershop, Reece Sheridan’s law office, and Jim Deatin’s auto supply store. One of them might have seen something. He’d check that out. Right after he found Anthony Blake to put a little scare into him so he’d go on to school. He didn’t want any throwaway kids in Hidden Springs.
    Michael worked his way through the people still milling around, but Anthony was nowhere to be found.

5
    After people drifted away to their jobs and errands, Michael went back to the sheriff’s office to listen one more time to Miss Willadean’s version of finding the body. With each retelling the story grew and changed a bit until what she had to say was next to useless.
    The sheriff thanked her and told Lester to escort her home since she claimed to still be feeling faint. Miss Willadean touched a handkerchief edged in purple pansies to her nose as she slowly stood up,