Murder on Old Main Street (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

I always did before exiting the Reading Room, I listened at the crack of the door to make sure no one was in the coat room, then headed for the stairs up to the loft. One needn’t worry about startling Emma, whose desk sat in an airy but cluttered recess at the top of the staircase, since the old wood creaked at every step. In any event, she was on the phone, which was pretty much a chronic state of being during her workday.
    “Hi, Icky,” I greeted the young field mouse who resided in a hamster cage on the credenza behind her desk. The old building housed its share of mice, and my tender-hearted daughter was forever rescuing one or another from the next door neighbor’s cat, a bruiser named Jake, and rehabilitating it before releasing it behind the barn. Each mouse was named Icky, due to visitors’ tendency to cry, “Ooooh, ick!” when they noticed the rodent du jour. The current patient was not only alive but feisty, rushing around bumping into the glass sides of his enclosure.
    “I think this one’s about ready to go,” I told Emma when she hung up the phone. “He’s starting to throw himself at the glass.” A wildlife biologist at the nature center had warned us that such behavior indicated release was warranted.
    Emma nodded. “I know. I’ll take him out back on my way to lunch. Jake will probably eat him for dinner, but at least I gave the kid a second chance.” She shrugged philosophically. “What’s up?”
    I told her about Mavis Griswold’s inexplicable reaction to the news of Prudy’s death and asked her opinion. “I’m inclined to mention it to the lieutenant, but I want to be sure I’m not just scandal-mongering. What do you think? Am I overreacting here?”
    “Hard to say,” Emma replied thoughtfully. “Obviously, there’s a story there somewhere, but who knows what it might be? Maybe grinning is just a nervous reaction for Mavis, although one would hope not, her being a minister’s wife and all. Have you considered just asking her about it straight out?”
    I hadn’t, but I did now. “Okay. I guess I could do that. It might be a little embarrassing for both of us, but it beats pointing suspicion at her if there’s no reason to do so.” I glanced around. Jimmy’s door was closed, as usual, and nobody else was in sight. “Where is everybody?”
    “Out to lunch, of course. They got all the gory details they could out of me, so they went in search of fresh dirt and left me to hold the fort.” The phone rang again, and she grimaced. “Emma here,” she said into the receiver, then mouthed “See you later” at me. I retraced my steps to the first floor.
    The rest of the day was filled with the usual end-of-month crises. Anyone involved with the business of transferring real estate knows that more closings are scheduled during the last week of the month than during the previous three weeks combined, and our personal lives get put on hold for the duration. With the ability to transfer documents electronically, and the repeal of the Blue Laws that used to protect our Sundays, weekends were no longer an exception. On the first of each month, our lives returned to normal, but until then refrigerators remained empty, laundry went undone, and errands accumulated while we tended nonstop to business.
    Sharing office space with Emma and her boss was working well. Both businesses benefited from mutual referrals, and Emma had the patience I lacked with the nervous first-time property buyers who were my particular peeve. Bristling with self-importance and their cutting-edge knowledge of real estate practices, usually obtained from a 22-year-old nephew or a library book written in 1987, they entered into the transaction determined that nobody was going to pull the wool over their eyes but convinced that everybody was trying to do just that. My reassurances that the people with whom we worked were consummate professionals, and really nice folks besides, tended to fall on deaf ears, and I quickly