The Fall Guy Read Online Free PDF

moved again, the door opened and the engine roared back to life. Spinning his tires on the gravel surface, the guy took off. From my hiding spot I watched as his taillights disappeared up the hill and out of sight, leaving the throaty roar of the car hanging in the air.
    I had heard that lousy muffler before. At Jeff Wilkins’ cottage.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    â€œT ell me again what happened?” Constable Swan raised one eyebrow and gave me a look. At least she’d given me a blanket and turned up the heat in her cruiser before starting in on me. Didn’t this woman ever sleep? Her cruiser clock said 12:02 AM. Two hours since I’d gone off the bridge. I was so tired I almost fell over in the backseat.
    I’d waited a long time in the water before I decided I was safe. Then I swam ashore and hauled myself up over the rocks. I stood on the road in the dark, listening to the owls. Now what? I could just see the wheels of my pickup sticking up above the water. I almost cried. The tow and repair bills were going to wipe me out. That weasel Wilkins hadn’t even paid me for the deck, and now that money was spent. If I ever saw it.
    I shivered so hard my teeth clattered. Every inch of me ached and I was dizzy. I needed help. Warmth, dry clothes and a phone to call the police. I stood in the middle of the bridge, trying to remember what was nearby. I’d passed nothing but pastures and woods on my way, but then I remembered the pastures belonged to Gerry Bennett, and his dairy farm was just at the top of the hill ahead.
    It was the longest hill I’d ever climbed. But Gerry’s homemade plum brandy warmed me nicely while he called the police. I was well into my third glass by the time Constable Swan arrived. She whipped it out of my hand before hustling me into her car. Back down to the bridge we went, with curious Gerry trundling along behind in his tractor. In case you need help pulling it out, he said. I knew my truck needed way more help than his tractor, but I was in no shape to argue. I had to save all my wits for Constable Swan.
    So I explained again about the car that ran me off the road.
    â€œNo offence, O’Toole,” Swan replied, “but you’re drunk as a skunk. We don’t call this bridge Last Call for nothing.”
    She was right about that. About once a year some idiot taking a shortcut home from the Lion’s Head would sail over the guardrail into the drink. I’d even helped Bud from Bud’s Garage rig a winch system that would haul the cars out of the creek without his tow truck even having to leave the road.
    I concentrated hard. “I’m not drunk. I mean, I wasn’t drunk. I was coming home from Wilk—” I saw her eyes narrow. “Aunt Penny’s. Someone’s trying to scare me off from saying what I know.”
    She looked up from her notebook. She was standing outside the open cruiser door, her foot resting on the running board. She leaned in to peer at me. “And what do you know?”
    â€œThat someone tampered with that deck. They changed the screws in the railing.”
    â€œAnd how do you know that?”
    â€œI…” Too late, I saw I was in a box. What the hell, I decided. Better she thinks I’m a bad listener than a drunk who can’t nail two pieces of wood together. “Because I found this screw in the rocks below the deck.”
    I wiggled my hand into my soggy pocket. The screw wasn’t there. I scrounged all around, thinking it might have gotten wedged in the corner. Nothing. By now, both her eyebrows were just about disappearing under her cap.
    â€œYou went out to the scene, O’Toole? After I gave you a direct order?”
    â€œSomeone is trying to set me up,” I said. “I found the wrong kind of screw at the site, but it must have fallen out in the water.”
    Swan waited a beat. “Set you up. And who might that be?”
    I was so dead-tired I could hardly think. I had