Bun for Your Life by Karoline Barrett Read Free Book Online Page B

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    â€œDid you know Calista Danforth-Brody well?” he barked suddenly, making me jump.
    â€œEveryone knows Calista. Knew Calista,” I corrected, trying to ignore the lump of sadness forming in my throat. “Her family has been here since the area was settled. Her orchard is very well known. Especially now, because of the Calista Sugar Pink apple she discovered. I’m still in shock that she’s dead. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would someone kill her?Who killed her?”
    â€œWere you good friends?” he countered, ignoring my inquiries.
    â€œI wouldn’t say that,” I replied. “She was almost thirty years older than Olivia and me, which you must know already. We were in the same book club and we talked to each other, usually civilly, but we weren’t BFFs.”
    He frowned. “BF whats?”
    â€œBest friends forever. BFFs. We didn’t hang out together on a regular basis, in other words. We knew about each other’s lives since we both grew up here. She knew about my divorce, and that I still have feelings for my ex-husband, sometimes.” I didn’t mean for that to slip out, and hurried on.
    â€œI knew her husband died, about her feud with Trey Hamilton, that she had been dating him until recently, then she started dating Blake Ellsworth. But everyone knows these things.”
    â€œThis isn’t a huge town, detective,” Olivia added. “Most of us know things about each other, even if we aren’t good friends.”
    â€œI think you can safely assume neither of us killed her, so who did? Do you have any idea yet?” I asked Detective Corsino again, trying to get him to share something with us.
    â€œI’ve got lots of ideas,” he replied.
    None that he was sharing with me, that much was clear.
    He stared at us again for what seemed like minutes, but in reality, was probably mere seconds. “She was strangled to death with a Bread and Batter Bakery T-shirt.”
    â€œWhat?” Olivia and I squawked together.
    I sat down hard on the arm of the chair at the same time that Olivia jumped up, turning pale. I’m sure I was paler, too. I was too stunned to speak. Calista strangled with one of our T-shirts? The thought made me ill. The image forming in my mind of Calista, with one of our T-shirts tightening around her neck as she frantically clawed at it, unable to breathe, made me nauseous. Could it be the very one she took the day of the Apple Harvest Fair? My eyes filled with tears and I grabbed a tissue from the box on my desk. “What color was it?”
    â€œRed. There was also an empty Bread and Batter bag with doughnut crumbs in it at the murder scene,” the detective added, apparently immune to my very apparent emotional distress.
    â€œYou think we killed her?” Olivia stared at him with her mouth open, her eyes round.
    â€œDid you?” he shot back.
    â€œNo!” I retorted. “We did not!” I turned to Olivia.
Right?
I mouthed. Just in case I’d been wrong about her for the past twenty-eight years.
    She glared at me. “Of course you’re right,” she hissed back.
    Detective Corsino unlaced his hands, leaned forward, and rolled a pen back and forth across the desk. He looked at me, then at Olivia.
    His presence sucked the air out of the room. I desperately wished for a window we could open. Police like to leave pockets of silence while they’re interviewing suspects, so the suspects become uncomfortable and start talking to fill the silence, saying more than they planned.
    I’ve seen Detectives Benson and Stabler do it on
Law & Order: SVU
plenty of times, so I know this to be true. I didn’t want to fall into this real-life detective’s I’ll-be-quiet-so-they’ll-talk trap, but I couldn’t sit silent while he tried to build a case against us.
    I had no desire to go to prison instead of my cozy new apartment. There would be no beautiful