Random Acts of Murder: A Holly Anna Paladin Mystery, Book 1 (Holly Anna Paladin Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page B

knocked down your door yet?” Jamie asked, taking a bite of her veggie pizza. She’d turned her life around two years ago and lost a hundred pounds. Ever since then, she was a health food nut.
    The two of us had met in English class on our first day at the University of Cincinnati. We’d been inseparable since then. Her family had moved to the area only a few years ago from Pittsburgh, much to Jamie’s dismay. She claimed they’d followed her here, afraid their only baby girl would get in trouble. They claimed that her father, a musician, had been offered a gig he just couldn’t refuse.
    I shook my head. “Not yet, but I’ve been watching over my shoulder all day.”
    “I thought you’d like to know that I did hear something over the police scanner this morning. Then I used my contacts at the newspaper to find out some more information.”
    I leaned closer , pressing my arms into the thick wooden tabletop. “Okay. You’re leaving me in suspense here. I tried to find out stuff all day on my job, and everyone was tight lipped. I couldn’t press too hard or people would get suspicious.”
    She put her pizza back on the plate and leaned closer, as well. “The guy was apparently shot three times. He had traces of some kind of drug in his system—not surprising. So many crimes in this area are, in some way, because of drugs.”
    “Was he related to Katrina?”
    She shrugged and leaned back, picking a mushroom from the gooey cheese. “That, I haven’t been able to find out. I did hear that a neighbor called the police. He saw the front door was open and got suspicious.”
    Oops. That would have been my fault. At least my mistake had meant I hadn’t had to report the crime myself. It had also meant that the police now had my cleaning supplies.
    How long did it take to run fingerprints and DNA through the system? My sister probably knew. I just had to think of a creative way to ask her.
    Jamie raised her pizza again. “The bad news is that there was a suspicious van reported fleeing the scene.”
    The blood drained from my face as “Jailhouse Rock” began blaring through the overhead. “Are you serious?”
    She nodded. “Dead.”
    “Oh, Jamie. I had no idea.” I bit back a frown.
    “I willingly went w ith you, so the blame’s on me. Still, I really don’t want to have to explain all of this to the police.”
    “I’m going to make this all better, Jamie. I promise.”
    “It’s going to be hard to do that from jail.”
    My jaw dropped open.
    She waved her hand in the air in that sassy, sarcastic manner I should have been accustomed to by now. “I’m just kidding, girl. You keep quiet. They’ll never discover you.”
    “You are not making me feel better.”
    “I’m giving you a dose of reality.” She pulled out a bottle of vinegar from her purse and put a squirt in her water.
    I tried not to turn my nose up. She insisted that vinegar in her water helped to keep her thin. I’d just keep drinking my lemon water, thank you very much.
    I closed my eyes, fixating again on my problems instead of Jamie’s vinegar water. “What am I going to do?”
    “You can’t do anything except wait . . . or turn yourself in.” She took a long sip of her drink.
    Guilt pounded harder. I struggled with guilt over small things, like bugs that flew into my windshield or the snake that accidentally got caught under the lawn mower. Those moments of guilt seemed gnat sized compared to the mountains of culpability I faced now. “If the police show up at your door, I’ll explain everything, Jamie. I’ll take the blame and make it clear that you had nothing to do with this.”
    She cocked her head to the side. “And if they don’t believe you that you didn’t murder anyone, why would they believe you when you say I had nothing to do with it?”
    “Good point.” I buried my face in the table. “I’ve made a huge mess, Jamie.”
    She patted my hand. “Yes, you have.”
    I sighed and pulled my head up. “I guess