Sixth Grave on the Edge Read Online Free PDF

who’d just stepped in the front door to save my dignity, I lowered my hand and said, “I think the more important question is, do you think a machete and a spork are very compatible?”
    “Charley, you have to quit taking those ridiculous quizzes.”
    “No way. I have to know.”
    “Fine, but why a spork?”
    “Because I’m versatile. I can multitask like nobody’s business. And I like the way it sounds. It’s so … sporky.”

 
    3
    Coffee doesn’t ask silly questions.
    Coffee understands.
    —BUMPER STICKER
     
    We weren’t back in the office ten minutes before the door to the front entrance opened. I’d expected Mr. Joyce, the agitated man with the issues. Instead I got Denise. My evil stepmother. Thankfully, Mr. Joyce was right behind her. He afforded me the perfect excuse not to talk to her.
    Her pallor had a grayish tint to it, and her eyes were lined with the bright red only the shedding of tears could evoke. I honestly didn’t know she had the ability to cry.
    “Can I talk to you?” she asked.
    “I have a client.” I pointed to the man behind her to emphasize that fact.
    Giving her chin a determined upward thrust, she said, “You’ve had clients for two weeks now. I just need a minute.” When I started to argue again, she pleaded with me. “Please, Charlotte.”
    Mr. Joyce was holding a baseball cap, wringing it in his hands. He seemed to be growing more agitated by the second. “I really need to talk to you, Ms. Davidson.”
    “See?” I pinned Denise with a chastising scowl. “Client.”
    She turned on the man, her face as cold and hard as marble. It was an expression I knew all too well. “We just need a minute,” she said to him, her tone razor sharp. “Then she’s all yours.”
    He backed off, raising a hand in surrender as he stepped to a chair and took a seat.
    My temper flared to life, and I had to force myself to stay calm. I was twenty-seven. I no longer had to put up with my stepmother’s insults. Her revulsion. Her petty snubs. And I damned sure didn’t have to put up with her invading my business and bullying my clients. “That was not necessary,” I said to her when she turned back to me.
    “I apologize,” she said, doing a one-eighty. She turned back to Mr. Joyce. “I’m sorry. I’m in a very desperate situation.”
    “Tell me about it,” he said, dismissing her with a wave. He clearly had problems of his own.
    With all the enthusiasm of a prisoner walking up to the hangman’s noose, I led Denise into my office and closed the door. My temper flaring must have summoned Reyes. He was in my office, waiting, incorporeally.
    Then I remembered. He didn’t like Denise any more than I did. Blamed her for most of my heartache as a child. Of course, she’d caused most of it, but Reyes could be … testy when it came to my happiness or lack thereof.
    “Want me to sever her spine?” he asked as I sat behind my desk.
    “Can I think about it and get back to you?” I asked, teasing. Kind of.
    Denise looked toward the wall he was leaning against, the one I was looking at, and naturally saw nothing. But where her usual response would be to purse her lips in disapproval, she wiped at her lapel and sat down instead.
    “What do you want?” I asked her, my tone as cold as her heart.
    “I’m sure you know that your father has left me.”
    “At last.”
    She flinched like I’d slapped her. “Why would you say such a thing?”
    “Are you really asking me that?”
    “I love your father.” She almost came up out of her chair. “I’ve always loved your father.”
    She had me there. She’d always been an attentive wife to him. Of course, attentive included her agenda, which was manipulative, conniving, and venomous. I couldn’t believe that I could dislike someone so much, but Denise had always been that splinter in my relationship with my father. She did everything in her power to keep us apart. Her jealousy was bizarre and childish. Who on earth was afraid of a