Pinned for Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

at Leeson’s Market he tends to say very little. In fact . . . the only time I’ve ever heard him say more than a sentence or two is whenever I see him with Rose.” Bending at the waist, Milo pushed a sheer white panel from the window and glanced outside, downed limbs and sagging power lines greeting them in taunting fashion.
    “Why?” she asked, the purported relationship between the elderly woman and her former pupil tugging at something deep inside her soul.
    “You mean why does he talk to her when he doesn’t talk to anyone else?”
    She nodded.
    “Because she believed in him from the start.” Milo turned his head to the left and then the right, his gaze traveling down the road in either direction. “She believed in him when the kids on the playground teased him for being slow. She believed in him when prospective employers questioned his ability to work. She believed in him when his parents passed away when he was in his early twenties, leaving him to fend for himself for the first time in his life. And she believes in him now despite what sounds like damning evidence.”
    “Evidence?”
    “Martha Jane Barker has stashed large sums of money in her house for years. Yet Kenny shows up to help her after the storm and it suddenly disappears?”
    He was right. Things didn’t bode well for Kenny Murdock’s innocence. Then again, Tiffany Ann Gilbert—Sweet Briar’s town sweetheart—had shown up dead in the library parking lot not long after Tori came to town. And while there were many who linked the two instances together, they couldn’t have been more wrong. So didn’t it stand to reason the same could be said for the situation with Kenny Murdock?
    She said as much to Milo.
    “I suppose. I mean, anything’s possible. But you have to admit it’s a heckuva coincidence.”
    A firm knock at Rose’s front door brought an end to further discussion. Peeking out the window once again, Milo nodded at a man standing on the front porch. “Doesn’t take them long to blow into town, does it?”
    “Who is that?” she asked as she drank in the sight of the average-sized man with the dirty blond hair and sky blue eyes standing on Rose’s front stoop.
    “A drifter. Storms like these bring them by the dozens.”
    “Chasing work, I take it?” she asked as she noted the tool belt secured around the man’s hips.
    “That about sums it up.” Milo shadowed her down the hall as she closed the gap between the window and the door with several quick strides. “If it goes as it usually does after these things, this guy won’t be the last knock we hear.”
    Yanking open the door, Tori smiled at the man on the other side. “What can I do for you?”
    Extending a calloused hand in her direction, the man, clad in a red and black flannel button-down over a white T-shirt, smiled back. “Good evenin’, ma’am. My name is Doug. Hewitt.”
    “Doug,” Milo repeated along with a slight nod of his head.
    Gesturing toward the house, Doug continued, his left hand finding the top of his tool belt. “I can see the storm has turned your house topsy-turvy. Trees down, windows broke, shingles torn off your roof. Was wonderin’ if you might need a little help. My prices are fair. I charge sixty dollars a day for labor, fifty if you can give me a roof over my head and food in my stomach while I’m workin’.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Tori stared up at Milo. “He could get this place cleaned up faster than either of us could do after work. . . .”
    “What kind of roof do you need?” Milo asked. “I mean, would a cot in the garage suffice?”
    “Stayed in a lot worse ’n that before.”
    She looked back at Doug, studied the way his smile lit his face as his hand left his tool belt long enough to rake its way through his disheveled hair. “It’s not like I’m lookin’ to be real fancy or nothin’. Just need some work. Got myself a wife and two young-uns back home in Mississippi. Sooner I get some work lined