Bound To Die: A Cozy Mystery (Strawberry Shores Mystery Book 1) by Mak K. Han Read Free Book Online Page B

been worn by the culprit. That was why no fingerprints had been left behind. They'd worn one of the gloves.
    Something creaked behind me.
    I stood up quickly. “Hello?” I asked. I shined the flashlight where I'd heard the creak. “Is someone there?”
    My palms had gone sweaty all of a sudden. I shone the flashlight around but the shelves blocked my vision. It was time to go. I picked up the glove and tucked it in my back pocket. Slowly, I backed out of the aisle.
    Something shuffled beside me. I shrieked and spun. In the flash of the light I saw two things. A hand wearing a glove—the companion glove to the one I had in my pocket —and the piece of rebar the gloved hand clutched.
    Turning on my heel, I sprinted out of the secret room and took a right. My heart rat-a-tatted in my chest. I could hear the killer behind me, shuffling through the grass.
    When I reached the embankment I paused, and that pause proved to be a foolish one. The next thing I knew, something hard and metal contacted the back of my head and I went tumbling down the embankment.
    I landed face down in the water. My head was spinning and I was barely clinging to consciousness. I had to get a hold of myself. There was a killer only a few short yards away and here I was, practically immobilized. I flailed in the water.
    A hand contacted my tailbone and held me in place. Pure, abject terror flooded my body as I realized this was it. First it was Mr. Edwards. Now the killer is going to drown me.
    The glove slid out of my pocket, and then hands pulled me out of the water, lifted me gently into the air, and pivoted my body. The killer dropped me on the slope, face down. I gasped for breath and—despite the throbbing pain in my head—turned to look up at the killer. The killer's back was to me, though, and silhouetted against a floodlight. My vision was shaky from being hit on the head.
    The killer disappeared over the hill and I lay on the grass, catching my breath and waiting for the pain in my skull to pass.

Chapter 13
    “Ow! Emily, don't touch it!”
    Emily frowned. “I have to look at it, Laura!” she replied in a harsh whisper. She brushed my hair aside to look at the swollen bump on my head. “It doesn't look bad. Just a bump.”
    “Can we do this somewhere else?” Alex cut in. “It seems kind of inappropriate to be doing it here.”
    I pushed Emily's hand aside. “I agree.” We were at Mr. Brooks's wake. Most of the town had showed up. Just about everyone had shown up for Jane's sake. Everyone was too polite to say it aloud, but not a lot of people missed Mr. Brooks. The only people that were crying were Jane, and the people that were crying because Jane was crying. Jane had opened the floor for people to make speeches about their fondest memories of Mr. Brooks, and only two people had made speeches—Dennis Arbour and Chester Rutherford, Dennis speaking on how great of a trustee Mr. Brooks had been, Chester speaking on how great it had been to work with him.
    The wake had then basically turned into a town social.
    “And you're sure you didn't see his face?” Emily asked.
    I shook my head. “No. The light was in my eyes. All I saw was the glove and the piece of metal.”
    “That doesn't exactly narrow it down,” Alex pointed out. “That could be anyone. So here's a question. If your attacker was the killer, and it seems pretty likely that it was, why was he there?”
    “Or she,” I pointed out. “And I don't know. I think the only reason the killer attacked me was because I had the glove. Whoever it was, they pulled me out of the water, so they weren't trying to hurt me.”
    “They hit you with a piece of metal!” Emily cried.
    “Shh. I think that was just to disorient me. And it worked. I didn't see who it was.”
    “So you're thinking the killer was there to clean up the crime scene? Dispose of evidence?” Alex asked.
    I nodded. “Yeah, I do. The killer realized he or she left the glove behind and went back for