Beckett's Convenient Bride by Dixie Browning Read Free Book Online Page B

than a mile or so from one end to the other, surrounded by tidal marsh on three sides, the canal on the other. One of the things she liked best about it was the neighborly feeling among the dozen or so families, who were mostly kin and had lived there forever.
    â€œThat’s my car,” she yelled, her red sneakers pounding on the hard-packed marl. If it was in the way—and it was—she would move it. She didn’t need any stranger doing it for her. Ladybug had a ticklish transmission. For ticklish, read desperately ill.
    â€œHey, Kit, you all right?” one of the fishermen hollered.
    The man who’d been nosing around her car looked from her to the fishermen and back again. Without a word, he turned and loped over to a red pickup truck with one blue fender that was parked off to one side on Waterlily Road. Climbing in, he slammed the door shut and roared off in the direction of 158.
    For several moments Kit stood and stared after him, puzzled, but not wholly alarmed. Maybe he thought she’d run out of gas. Maybe he was only trying to be helpful. But then why had he run away?
    And why had the sound of his truck struck a nerve?Almost everyone around here drove trucks, and one sounded pretty much like another, at least to her undiscriminating ears.
    Suddenly a chill coursed through her, like a cloud shadow racing across the marsh grass. It wasn’t panic, she told herself. Panic had been when she’d found that body with a bullet hole in the forehead. Since then she hadn’t had time to panic.
    Well…she might have come close a time or two.
    But it was broad daylight. No one with half a brain would try to steal a car in front of the whole town at a quarter of five in the afternoon. It was probably just someone who collected vintage VWs. She’d had several offers. Seeing it parked on the roadside, he might have thought it was for sale and was checking it over to see if he was interested. Maybe he’d been looking for a For Sale sign.
    But then, why run away?
    Because he’d recognized the Ladybug from the church parking lot and was looking for a way to silence a potential witness? Because he’d been looking for identification so that he could find out where she lived, sneak into her house late at night and smother her in her bed?
    â€œThe curse of the writer’s mind,” Kit muttered. She could create drama from three ants in a sugar bowl.
    On the other hand, there had been a murder—she hadn’t imagined that. Fisting her hands in frustration, she wailed in the direction the truck had disappeared, “Blast you, I didn’t see anything!”
    A startled mockingbird flew from a nearby bay tree, and she expelled her breath in a frustrated sigh. What now? Hyper imagination or not, she knew better than to touch her car without having someone check it over first. She’d seen the news. She read hard-edged suspense novels. He could have tampered with her brakes or attached one of those thingees to the ignition that would make it explode as soon as she turned the key. Or maybe even when she opened the door.
    God, what a day—and she never swore. Never!
    She felt like crying, only she never cried, either, so what now? Unlock the door and risk getting herself blown up, or wait and let someone else take the risk?
    Well, that wasn’t much of an alternative.
    Maybe her policeman would know what to do. That is, if he really were a policeman. A policeman, she reminded herself, who knew not only her full name, but knew how to find her. Not even her grandparents knew where she lived. At least, she didn’t think they did.
    No, it had nothing to do with her grandparents. It was just a little too coincidental, the way he’d turned up knowing her full name on the same day she’d heard a shot and discovered a body.
    The trouble with being a fan of suspense novels was that it opened your mind to all sorts of possibilities.
    The trouble with being a