R.P. Dahlke - Dead Red 04 - A Dead Red Alibi Read Online Free PDF Page A

ah, secure the scene and get everyone’s names.”
    His radio bleated and he jerked like he’d been shot, then lifted it off his belt and held it to his ear. “Oh, yeah? That so. Okay, I’ll be right there.”
    The deputy fastened the radio back onto his belt. “Looks like we have another homicide.”
    “At the art compound?” I asked, looking uphill at a distant line of trees anchored to a hillside. “Who?”
    “It’s under investigation and that’s all you need to know.”
    He stuffed the notebook back into his shirt pocket. “I have to get up there now, secure the area for Homicide and the M.E.”
    He turned to leave, then circled back to us, rubbing the back of his neck. “Dang it! What was I thinking? How am I supposed to secure a murder scene in another place when any of you might be suspects in this one?”
    Visibly bristling at the insult, Karen said, “I can vouch for Miss Bains and her dad, Deputy, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
    He squinted at her. “But who’s going to vouch for you ?”
    “Dumb-ass,” Dad mumbled under his breath.
    Karen, who had clearly been in charge of her temper a minute ago, now lost it. “Who the hell you think you’re talking to? I’ve been working with the sheriff’s department longer than you’ve been shaving.”
    I wanted to high-five Karen. Whippersnapper, indeed.
    “Is that so? Well, until Homicide or the sheriff says otherwise, I go by the book. And since I can’t take the chance that y’all won’t go running off the minute my back is turned, you two get in the back seat and Karen and her dog ride up front.”
    Spreading his arms wide he herded us to his patrol car. “Hurry up now, I haven’t got all day. Oh, and I’ll take your wallets and cell phones. We’ll check your identities, and then maybe you can go home. Or not.”
    “Dumb-ass,” my dad muttered again.
    Deputy Abel got into the driver’s side and started the car.
    “Deputy, ” Karen said, “if I hadn’t been out here looking for Mr. Bains, no one would’ve known where to look for the chief, much less find him.”
    The deputy nodded, starting the engine. “Got that right. Not when the man was supposed to be on his way to Wyoming. We wouldn’t have started looking for at least another week.”
    “He was dead when I found him,” Dad said.
    “Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. Either way, Homicide is going to have a lot of questions for you folks. Everyone buckle up now.”
    Dad and I looked at one another, thinking the same thing—weren’t we glad my fiancé, Sheriff Caleb Stone, wasn’t here to see us in trouble again?
    Deputy Abel gunned the engine and the patrol car bounced over the rutted road and up the hill. I was curious to see what an art compound would look like. Would it be some sort of hippy commune with farm animals and babies in the same crib? As we crested the hill, the blades of a colorful windmill caught the light like a child’s whirligig.
    We turned onto an unpaved road, passing a collection of Do Not Enter and No Trespassing signs, and finally stopped next to a big white two-story house. The house sat a hundred feet or so across from three small cabins set in a stand of poplars. Equidistant between the cabins and the house was a huge barn, the doors open, a bright acetylene torch telegraphing the message that someone was hard at work.
    Putting on the brake, Deputy Abel hopped out and trotted over to the other deputy, and they both disappeared into the house.
    I said what we were all thinking. “What’re the chances that the dead body here and the one my dad found are totally unrelated?”

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    Chapter Five:
     
     
    My dad, exhausted from his six hour ordeal in an abandoned mine pit, had fallen asleep, his soft snores filling the patrol car.
    Karen’s Blue H eeler had taken over the driver’s seat and was perusing the yard for something more interesting than my dad’s snores.
    “Since it appears that we’re to wait,” I said to