Murder Most Mellow (A Kate Jasper Mystery) Read Online Free PDF

Sheriff’s Department will contact you later if you’ll give me your phone number.” He held his pencil over his notebook expectantly.
    “Why?” I asked. I could hear the shrillness in my own voice. I lowered my pitch. “What’s happened here?”
    “Couldn’t say,” he responded. Whatever warmth had been in his voice was gone again. “Your phone number?” he requested once more.
    “But I have an appointment with Sarah,” I insisted. Suddenly I felt very cold. Had something happened to Sarah? The sheriff angled his mirrored eyeglasses down at me. I rattled off my phone number. He wrote it down and closed his notebook.
    “You have no further business here,” he told me in a voice that could freeze fire. “You’ll have to back out the driveway.”
    I wanted to argue, but it’s hard to argue with a man who has no eyes. I put my Toyota in reverse under his unreadable gaze and began to roll back.
    Then Sarah’s door burst open. Men and women came buzzing out and around the entrance like bees around a hive. The back of one man emerged into the center of the activity. His gloved hands were holding the end of a stretcher. As the whole stretcher came into view I saw what was on top of it. A long, zippered plastic bag.
    I jammed on the brake and leapt from my car. The sheriff with the mirrored glasses rushed back toward me.
    “No!” I shouted. My body went rigid with fear. “That’s not Sarah, is it?” It couldn’t be, I told myself. Not Sarah! Sarah was immortal.
    The sheriff blocked my way and said nothing. I looked over his shoulder and watched the stretcher being loaded into a county van.
    “Tell me—” I began.
    “What the hell are you doing here?” boomed a voice from behind me.
    I turned and saw a familiar face, Sergeant Tom Feiffer’s of the Marin County Sheriff’s Department. He didn’t look much different than he had two years ago, still tall and muscular with curly blond hair and blue eyes. Only now he had maybe ten more pounds on his frame and a very angry expression on his face. When he jerked his head in dismissal, the sheriff with no eyes left us.
    The rigidity flowed out of my body into the ground, leaving my muscles weak and rubbery.
    “Sarah…” I began, then faltered under Feiffer’s angry glare. “I had an appointment… that’s not her, is it?”
    He didn’t answer me. Damn.
    “Why are you here?” I demanded shrilly.
    “This area is outside city limits, under county jurisdiction,” he answered briefly.
    I heard the doors of the county van slam shut.
    “Is that Sarah’s body?” I asked again, struggling to keep my voice level. I looked into Sergeant Feiffer’s eyes. I saw the anger go out of them.
    He nodded and turned his face away. Sarah dead? I couldn’t take it in. The air shimmered around me. Was I going to keel over?
    Feiffer turned his face back to me. “How come every time there’s a mysterious death in Marin you show up?” he asked. His suspicious tone knocked the dizziness out of me.
    “Mysterious!” I repeated sharply. “What do you mean ‘mysterious’? Was Sarah murdered?”
    “I don’t know,” Feiffer answered, his blue eyes glued to mine. “Was she?”
    “How should I know?” I shot back. I backed up a step. I didn’t like the sound of his question.
    Feiffer sighed. He looked back at the buzz of activity behind him. Then he returned his eyes to mine. “Come with me,” he said evenly.
    I followed him through the gaggle of men and women at Sarah’s door into her house and down the dimly lit hall to her living room. Feiffer cautioned me not to touch anything, then motioned me to an orange velvet love seat, the only clear surface in the room. Every thing else was covered in the refuse of Sarah’s life. Feiffer removed a stack of computer printouts from an easy chair, then sat down himself. I looked around the room at the litter of books, dishes, magazines, laundry and computer paper. Everything was in its normal place. Whatever had happened