Unbinding Love: An Angela Panther Mystery Novella (The Angela Panther Mystery Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

him.” She pointed to Bill.
    I leaned against a shelf full of opened potting soil bags filled with varying amounts of soil. “Uh, Bill, or Dan, or whatever you wanna be called, we need to talk privately. Would you mind skedaddling for a bit?”
    “I’m going to my son,” he said, and left.
    “Don’t matter none where he goes,” Ma said. “He can’t see him anyway, on account that he’s evil an’ all.”
    “Tell me everything.” I glanced at Mel who was tossing two blue lacrosse balls between her hands. Her joke wasn’t lost on me. I smirked and said, “Mel, get your Nancy Drew notepad. This is gonna be good.”
    She dropped the balls and grabbed her purse from inside. “Shoot.”
    Ma filled me in, and as usual, I repeated it all to Mel, sans Ma’s old school, raised in Chicago Heights, just off the boat from Italy, lazy English.
    “So you think Emma knew her life was in danger?”
    “Yeah. Her mother told the police that she dropped off the boy the day he went missing. Told them her daughter got an envelope on her front porch the day before.”
    “What was in the envelope?” I asked.
    “A picture of Justin sittin’ at school, eatin’ his lunch. Probably somethin’ bad too. Josh says those school lunches are nasty. Says the Tweeter is blowin’ up with pictures of rotten meat and cold beans. They oughta have Italian women makin’ their lunches. ‘Course not half-breeds like you. You got your father’s cookin’ genes. Too bad, you ask me.”
    “Can you not slam my cooking ability now, please? And it’s Twitter.”
    Mel snorted.
    “What cooking ability?” Ma asked. “You don’t got one.”
    “Good grief, Ma. So you were saying? About Justin Marx.”
    “Oh, yeah, so they think Emma was protecting him.” She repeated what she’d said earlier.
    I dragged my thumb and forefinger down my mouth and rubbed my chin. “I would have freaked, too.”
    “Apparently, she did. The grandma said she said they’d been found and something bad was gonna happen. She didn’t know what to do, and told her ma she didn’t think the Marshals could help, so she left Justin with the one person she could trust. ‘Cause you know us grandmas are trustable an’ all.”
    “But her mother hadn’t changed her identity. What’s to stop Bill’s—“ I paused, trying to find the right word, “enemies from finding him there?”
    “Beats me,“ Ma said. “Looks like we need to get Bill back here to find out what’s goin’ on.”
    “Yeah, I think you’re right.”
    We stood there and waited but nothing happened.
    “Well, you gonna get him or what?” Ma asked.
    “Me? I thought you were doin’ it.”
    “Why should I do it? You’re the one that does the ghost talkin’, you get him.”
    I felt the heat rising up my neck. “Oh for crying out loud. This is not the time to teach me a life lesson.” I clenched my fists. “Fine, whatever.” I focused my thoughts away from my frustration toward my mother and on Bill’s energy and asked him to come back.
    He did.
    “That was weird,” he said. “All of a sudden I was drawn back here. How did that happen?”
    I flung my hand. “Fugeddaboudit. We need to talk.”
    “Okay.”
    I laid it all out for Bill. Told him I thought he was responsible for whatever had scared his wife, and for her death. I explained that he had to tell us everything or his son would be in more danger and could end up dead too.
    “The note,” he said, “it was a scare tactic. They weren’t after my boy. They were after my wife.”
    Ma gasped.
    “Emma? Why?”
    “Because of the money.”
    “The money you laundered? I thought the cops got that.”
    “There’s still two million missing.”
    “Holy crap. That’s a lotta cash. Do you know where it is?” After the words left my lips, I realized he probably did, as did his wife.
    “No, and that’s the problem. I thought it was buried in her backyard, but I’ve looked and can’t find it. I’m worried if I don’t, they’ll use