Bill Hopkins - Judge Rosswell Carew 01 - Courting Murder by Bill Hopkins Read Free Book Online

heard everything. She wore the hint of a perfume scented like lilacs. Her mouth never opened unless she said something worth hearing.
    Her two-tone brown sheriff’s department uniform wasn’t as sexy as her cheerleader outfit. Rosswell knew that because he’d seen her wearing it on occasion lately. In private.
    “Rosswell?” Tina Parkmore queried when he sloshed through the door, then she noticed the other men. “I mean, Judge Carew.” Their relationship was no secret; although during work hours, they tried to keep it professional. “What’s wrong?”
    Frizz didn’t wait for Rosswell to answer Tina. “Two people were murdered up at Foggy Top.”
    “Who?” she asked, swiveling her chair around to face the sheriff. She was interrupted by the radio. An officer was trying to find the owner of a flock of chickens whose hen house had been flattened by the storm. Tina transmitted the owner’s address, then turned to Rosswell. “Anyone I know?”
    Neal said, “Go ahead, tell her, Judge.”
    Rosswell wanted to say Thanks, Neal, for making me look like a stupid jerk in front of Tina. Instead, all he could come up with was, “No thanks. That’s the sheriff’s job.”
    Frizz pointed at Rosswell. “You’re so all-fired ready to be part of this fiasco. Go ahead and tell her.” He shook his hat and water flew across the room.
    The three males, their machismo deflated, hung their heads, each of them reminding Rosswell of an embarrassed lion trying to regain his pride. The single bright spot in this sorry picture was Tina, who grew more beautiful every day.
    Tina said, “If it’s a secret, then never mind.” She turned her attention to a stack of papers on her desk.
    Rosswell cleared his throat. No one else was in the place but the four of them. “We don’t know who it was.”
    “Ah,” she said. “Neal has to identify the bodies? Is that the secret?”
    Neal said, “We lost the bodies.” Tina’s eyes widened. The phone rang and she answered it. Rosswell listened to a conversation about a stray cat digging in some old lady’s garden, preparing a place to poop. “We’ll check into it,” Tina said and then hung up. She again turned to Rosswell. “How did you lose the bodies?”
    “We had the bodies,” he said. “From a preliminary examination, we think they were murdered. When the big storm came, it washed them down the bank into the river. They must’ve floated away down Cloudy River.”
    “Ah,” Tina said again. “The bodies flushed away during the storm? What are y’all going to do now?”
    Again pointing at Rosswell, Frizz said, “Judge Carew is not going to do anything. I’m calling out the search and rescue volunteers.” He smoothed the wet brim of his hat. “I guess that they’re really just going to be the search volunteers. Going after corpses. No live people, so there won’t be any rescue.”
    Neal said, “We’d best be finding them today.” Frizz said, “Or there’s hell to pay this weekend.” From Thursday until Sunday, the Harley Spring Ride—Hogfest—would inundate Marble Hill with a couple of hundred hog lovers. The courthouse would be closed Thursday, Friday, and Saturday to keep citizens from using the toilets and generally messing up the place. Foggy Top State Park would be crammed full of campers. The small town’s streets would be packed with folks attending the street fair that accompanied the deluge of riders. Saturday night would be a full moon.
    They had to find the bodies and solve the murders quickly. Today. Tina began calling out the volunteers.

    Without bothering to close the door, Neal and Frizz conferred in the sheriff’s office, a place the sheriff called “headquarters.” Rosswell relinquished the Nikon to Tina so she could download the pictures of the crime scene to the sheriff’s computer.
    “Nice mushrooms,” she said, winking at Rosswell. He hoped Neal and Frizz didn’t catch her flirt. She whispered, “I wrote you a letter.”
    Before he