Ruff Way to Go Read Online Free PDF

exactly the crudest of names, but
it had struck me as such at age six. Their two daughters had been teenagers
then. My mom had hired the eldest as a babysitter, and the four of us minors had
a mutual lack-of-admiration society going. The Haywoods’ daughters should be in
their early forties now. I wondered if we’d all still dislike one another.
    Harvey and
Betsy had stepped out onto the sheltered area of their porch to speak to the officer.
Harvey, wearing the old man uniform of knee-length shorts, black socks, and a
sleeveless undershirt, rocked on his heels. Betsy was wearing what looked to be
the same housecoat she’d worn virtually every day twenty years earlier. In a
gesture that seemed uncharacteristic of the garrulous woman I remembered, she
brought her hands to her lips as the officer spoke.
    Wait a
minute! They lived right next to Edith’s property, on the opposite side
of the Cunninghams’. Why hadn’t they heard me calling for help?
    My mother
approached in her white and blue King Cab pickup truck. No one could ever
mistake us for anything other than mother and daughter, though at five-six she’s
considerably taller than I am. She often wore her long brown hair—which
she’d only recently begun to dye—in a braid. I watched her expression
change in an instant from curiosity to concern to fear as she spotted me with
the officers. Just as her face registered panic, she threw open the car door
and was out of her car running toward me.
    “Allida! Are
you all right?”
    “I’m fine,”
I said as calmly as I could, though the sight of my mother when I was already
this traumatized made me have to battle tears. “It’s Cassandra Randon. She was
killed.”
    “Oh, my God.
Where’s Melanie?”
    “Nobody
seems to know.”
    The officer
beside me cleared his throat and stepped between us. “Ma’am? Why don’t you get
some dry clothes for your daughter? She has to come with us.”
    Mom gasped
and looked at me.
    “I have to
go make a statement, Mom. I found Cassandra when I went over to see Edith
Cunningham.”
    The rain was
starting to pick up again, but Mom turned and stood glaring at the policeman as
if she intended to pick a fight on my behalf. Never one to back away from a
confrontation, Mom would not have surprised me if she clobbered him.
    Just then, a
middle-aged man in uniform left Edith’s house, walking with a confidence in his
step that gave off the aura of authority. “Andy,” Mom called to him. She
gestured at me. “This is my daughter.”
    “I know,
Marilyn. But right now she’s also the primary witness in a suspicious death. ‘Fraid
we’ve got to take her in for questioning.”
    “Then I’m
coming with you.”
     
    ***
     
    “Did your
mom see you earlier this afternoon? Or was anyone with you at your office?”
Sergeant Millay asked me. We were seated in a tiny room within the small brick
building in downtown Berthoud that housed the police department. The walls were
plain white, a fluorescent ceiling fixture the only light source, a table and
four chairs the only furnishings. My mother, I knew, was seated on the bench
just outside this room, when she wasn’t pacing in front of the door and its
little window.
    This line of
questioning instantly got my heart going. I tried to reassure myself that,
because I’d found the body, I had to account for my whereabouts during Cassandra’s
death. But the concept of the police acting as though I were a possible suspect
in a murder case frightened me to the bone.
    “Yes, there
was my client, as I already described, followed by Trevor Cunningham, Edith’s...”—I
hesitated at adding the word “estranged,” knowing the police would already
suspect him and not wanting to make it obvious that I did as well—“husband.
He left at about three-thirty.”
    “How long
did it take you to drive between your office and the house?”
    “Forty
minutes.”
    I could see
by his expression that he was doing the mental calculations.
    “Did you