Ring of Truth Read Online Free PDF Page A

to this job.
    He didn't blame her, it was a particularly nasty one.
    It was possible that the victim was killed somewhere else and then beaten postmortem, but the excess of blood made him doubt it. It appeared she had died right there where she lay on the bare wood floor. He looked around. This was once a dining room. Two-story house. Open-air tower at the upper right front of it. He hadn't been up there yet, or anywhere else on the property except straight through from the gate to here.
    The young tech misunderstood his interest.
    “Cool old house, isn't it? Too bad it's so run-down, or maybe I'd buy it, fix it up.
    “You'd buy it?” he asked, amused.
    “Well, it's for sale,” she said, defensively.

    His head jerked around again and he stared at her so fiercely that she backed up a step. “It's what? For sale?”
    “Yeah,” she said, looking a little scared, but also confused, as if to say, “So what?”
    “I didn't see a sign out front,” he challenged her.
    “It's in back,” she told him, still defensive.
    “Show me.”
    Nervously, with the big cop at her heels the young tech led him through French doors onto the decrepit patio. And there, leaning up against the house was the FOR SALE sign. Carl took out a handkerchief, placed it over the edge of the sign so he could tilt it up to read it without getting prints on it.
    FOR SALE, it read. A WING & A PRAYER REALTORS. SUSANNA WING.
    “I'll be damned,” he muttered, with a quickening of interest that he hadn't felt inside the house. This case had just gotten a whole hell of a lot more interesting. Staring down at the sign, Carl smiled, but so coldly that the tech backed up another step away from the big detective.
    “Is that important, or something?” she bravely asked.
    “Hell, I know who she is,” he said out loud.
    “You do?” she exclaimed, impressed at this apparent evidence of super detective powers.
    “Has to be her. Too much of a coincidence otherwise.” This was no prostitute. No tourist, no homeless woman. There was a missing persons report on this beaten woman, but he hadn't connected the MPR with the nude, bloody body in the mansion. It just hadn't fit his mental image of— “A preacher's wife,” he said out loud, his voice holding the satisfaction of a mystery solved.
    “A what?” the tech asked in shocked, disbelieving tones.
    Carl pointed at the FOR SALE sign: A Wing & a Prayer.
    “But how do you know?”
    “There's an MPR on her,” Carl said.

    “A Missing person's report? Really?” The tech's eyes were wide. “Since when?”
    “Last night.”
    “That's quick!”
    “Yes,” Carl agreed, and then added in a low, contemplative tone, “I expect she wasn't supposed to be found this soon.” At the quizzical look on his companion's face, he explained, “Whoever killed her, he must have thought it would be a while before anybody found her body.”
    “Why didn't he just dump her in the canal?”
    “Because bodies float.”
    “Oh, yeah,” Martina said, flushing. “I knew that. Say, if she's a real estate agent, I'll bet one of her clients killed her, don't you? Maybe he lured her out here on the pretext of buying this property, and then he attacked her?”
    “Could be,” Carl murmured, but was distracted by the arrival of another homicide detective, Jill Norman, to whom he said, “Hey, Norm, looky here who our victim just may be.”
    The other detective stood only three inches shorter than Carl, but she was ten years younger, a short-haired blonde in a prim white blouse and dark trousers who could have passed for a preacher's wife herself. She focused on the real estate sign he was pointing at and a startled laugh burst out of her. “Oh, my God,” she said, looking incredulous. “I don't believe it.”
    The two homicide detectives exchanged amused glances.
    “Any other ID turn up?” he asked her.
    “No. No purse, nothing with a name on it.”
    “Except this sign,” he suggested, in a dry tone.
    “And wouldn't it