The Trouble With Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

the helmet over my head,
fastening the chinstrap. I brought the kickstand up and prepared the kick pedal
then gripped the handlebars for balance as I threw my weight down on it. The
engine coughed then, with a series of crisp pops, chugged to life. Stowing the
pedal, I pulled the goggles down and accelerated out of the driveway, once
again on my way to work. I buzzed into the lot and parked at eight fifty-five.
     
    _______________
     
    “Geez, what happened to you?” Sandra asked when I walked in.
She had her perfectly-painted lips slightly curled.
    Sandra is thirty going on fifteen.
She’s petite, pretty, unnaturally blonde, and fashion savvy. She likely spent
an hour on her hair alone each morning. Ditto for her makeup. In the six months
she’d worked here, I hadn’t seen her wear the same pair of shoes twice. I
confess, I don’t even own enough shoes anymore to do that for two weeks. Well,
maybe two weeks. But certainly not three. Okay, definitely not a month.
    “We can’t all look like beauty
queens,” I said, blowing by her toward my office.
    She took an indiscreet whiff as I
passed. “Were you with a man?”
    I didn’t like the level of
accusation in her tone. What the hell was wrong with me being with a man, if
that’s where I had been?
    Without responding, I let myself in
the door and dropped my stuff on my desk, then raised the blinds and opened the
windows. It was May, and our weather was unseasonably warm, the daytime highs
reaching into the eighties more often than not. Today would probably be one of
those days. But this morning there was a pleasant breeze blowing and the office
was stuffy. After settling myself in, I went back to Sandra’s desk.
    “Were you able to reach my eight
o’clock?”
    She shook her head. “No. I left a
message, but he hasn’t called back.”
    Weird, I thought. He was
so eager last night.
    “Maybe he changed his mind,” I
said. “Do I have messages?”
    Sandra shuffled through the items
on her desk and finally located a stack of pink while you were out notes under the current edition of Cosmo. She shuffled through them, sorting out mine, then handed them to me. The
picture of efficiency.
    I glanced at the clock.
    “Heard anything from my nine
o’clock?” I asked. “He’s late.”
    She shrugged and turned a page in
her magazine.
    “Nope.”
    Right.
    I walked back to my office. The
other offices were occupied, most with doors open and voices drifting out. The
office at the end of the hall belonged to Barry Paige. Paige was the director
of the Fort Collins division of White Real Estate and Property Management. He’d
been doing his job a few months longer than Sandra, but he wasn’t any better at
his than she was at hers.
    Mark White, a real estate tycoon
and the owner of White Real Estate, had originally offered me Paige’s position.
He’d just expanded the company to include Loveland and wanted someone who would
help bring growth. I would have done just that, but I’d had to refuse. Under
Paige, our division had grown a measly seven percent. I would have more than
doubled that number in the same time. As it was, my numbers accounted for four
of the seven percent. I’m not sure White has totally forgiven me for turning
him down.
    When I was eighteen, in my first
year of college, working as a CNA in a nursing home in preparation for what I
believed would be a long nursing career, a close friend at the time, Brandi,
had introduced me to a man named Matt. A few years older than me, Matt had lived
in Denver and worked for Colorado Property Management Group as a leasing agent
for one of the pricier apartment complexes. Taylor Swift sings a song about
being fifteen and believing someone when they say they love you. The same holds
true when you’re eighteen. He told me he loved me and I believed him. Simple as
that.
    I’d finished my second semester of
school and hadn’t enrolled in a third, my nursing career on hold. I’d quit my
job, taken a position with the