April Fool Dead by Carolyn Hart Read Free Book Online Page A

back his beloved Ferrari all the way to the cemetery road, which by now had no doubt assumed almost mythical status as a well-traveled byway—“a turnoff. Let’s try it.”
    Max was still peering into the dimness of the forest. “Annie, I saw a cougar. I swear I did.”
    Annie swiftly rolled up her window. She knew the island was reputed to have several of the big tawny wildcats. That was fine, a nice addition to the tourist literature. She preferred dolphins every time. “Let’s catch up with Emma. Try that way.”
    Max pulled up to the entrance to the track and stopped.
    Annie cleared her throat. “If her oversize, lumbering Rolls-Royce can manage to drive that way—”
    Max signaled, turned to the right. This tunnel was so dark, they needed the headlights, but after a short stretch, maybe twenty feet, the trail widened into a small clearing with a weathered wooden house on stilts, two sheds and a dingy green tractor. The pink Rolls-Royce was parked by the nearest shed.
    Max smiled. “Hey, there’s room to turn around.” His delight matched Stanley sighting Livingstone.
    Emma was striding across the sandy clearing, the sun glinting on her spiky orange hair.
    â€œCome on, Max. Let’s see what Emma’s up to.” Annie hoped Emma remembered that Pamela Potts was awaiting their arrival at the cemetery and that Pamela claimed to have a second sheet of clues.
    As their car doors slammed, a white-haired man in worn, dirt-stained coveralls came out on the porch of the old house, a shotgun cradled in his muscular arm.
    Annie called out, “Emma, wait. He’s got a shotgun.”
    Emma kept right on going, a careless wave of her hand the only acknowledgment of Annie’s warning.
    The old man, his wizened face the color of mahogany, looked past Emma at Annie and Max, frowned, gestured with the shotgun. “Private prop’ty.”
    â€œThey’re with me, Daniel.” Emma pointed toward a path that angled into the forest. “We need to get to the cemetery and the road’s jammed with traffic.”
    A flush mounted in his face, turning his skin a rusty orange. “People got no right. They’re trespassers. Walkin’ across the graves like it was picnic land. You hear that?” He nodded his head to his left. There was a dull sound, similar to a faraway roar of a football crowd or the rumble of surf. “I’ve half a mind to go shoot my gun, tell ’em to leave, but the police…”
    A siren squalled in the distance.
    â€œâ€¦told me they’d take care of it. I told the police they got to find out who’s causing this trouble. Why, they’s people so deep around the Tower grave, I couldn’t get past on my tractor, and I got to dig a new grave just past there for tomorrow.”
    â€œThe Tower grave.” Max squinted against the sun. “Bob Tower? Insurance agent? Had his own company?”
    The old man leaned the shotgun against the porch railing. The stairs squeaked beneath his weight. “Robert Payne Tower as was buried two years ago this spring.”
    â€œThat’s Bob. He and I used to play tennis. A good guy.” Max jammed his hands in his pockets. “Hey, Annie, you remember Bob.”
    â€œOh yes.” She remembered Bob Tower’s easy grin and the shock of learning he’d been hit by a car and left to die.
    Emma was crisp. “They never found out who did it.”
    The flyer had listed a hit-and-run among the purported crimes. But Annie hadn’t realized the victim was someone she’d known. Bob Tower, tall and lanky with curly brown hair and kind brown eyes.
    Emma slipped on purple sunglasses with pink rims. “Seventeen graves south of the Portwood Mausoleum?”
    â€œYep.” Daniel rubbed a grizzled cheek. “His wife comes once a week and sometimes the kids are with her. They bring wildflowers—daylilies and coral bean and swamp rose