Burning Justice by Leighann Dobbs Read Free Book Online Page A

my chin to catch any stray crumbs
    “I’m happy to.” Lexy glanced up at me. “Under one condition.”
    I swallowed the cookie hard. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what the condition was going to be. “Condition?”
    “Yes. I want to go with you.” Lexy spread a doily in the bottom of the box and got to work with a spatula, arranging cookies in expert circular patterns on top of the doily.
    “I don’t know about that. It could be dangerous. The man could be a murderer.” I’d never brought Lexy, or anyone for that matter, on one of my cases before. But I’d seen the way her eyes sparkled when I talked shop, and the other times she’d given me cookies like this, she’d had a look of longing on her face.
    I guess I’d known it was only a matter of time before she asked to come along. I could see she really wanted to go and part of me wanted to take her along. She was a good friend and I figured she could use some excitement. Not to mention that she still had good instincts. Maybe she could help.
    Lexy waved her hand. “Pshaw. I’ve dealt with my share of murderers. I can handle myself. Besides, you need me.”
    “I do?” I narrowed my eyes.
    “Sure. What excuse are you going to use?”
    “I was just planning to stretch the truth and say I was a friend of Evangeline’s, and I’d heard about what happened and was coming to pay my respects.”
    She screwed up her face. “And you think he’ll fall for that? He just murdered his wife, so he’s going to be very suspicious of everything now and he’s bound to wonder why he never met you.”
    “You have a point and that’s exactly why I don’t want to bring you.”
    “Oh, don’t worry, he won’t do anything to us. Not in broad daylight with the police watching over him. But my presence will give you a distinct advantage in getting in the door in the first place. You don’t want to waste your one cookie-bringing opportunity do you?”
    She was right—I didn’t want to waste my one opportunity. I wouldn’t be able to approach him more than once without him becoming suspicious.
    “What did you have in mind?” I asked.
    “Oh, I’m just going to use a similar tactic as you, but I have a trick up my sleeve that I never told you about. A way of making the pretext seem more realistic.”
    I narrowed my eyes. “You do? What is it?”
    “You don’t need to know. Just leave it up to me and I’ll get us in.” Lexy snapped the box shut and expertly tied pink and white striped twine around it. Holding the box by the twine on the top, she gestured for me to proceed toward the door. “Well, are we going or not?”
    “I guess so…”
    Lexy opened the door and pushed me through. “Don’t worry, dear, nobody ever turns away a grandma carrying baked goods.”

Chapter Seven
    W e made the drive to Lake Street crammed into my PTV, the bakery box balanced on Lexy’s lap. As we came up the street, she craned her neck to see the damage in the backyard.
    “Oh, my, there’s not much left of it,” she said.
    We pulled into the circular driveway of the large house and stopped under the portico in front of the door. A water fountain flanked by tall lilyies and maroon and white mums splashed to the right. The lush green grass in the side garden had been trampled by the police that morning. The damage hadn’t stopped there. They’d also mangled the edging and crushed a bed of pansies and black-eyed Susans.
    Lexy eyed the trodden landscaping with disapproval. “Look what the police did here. It should be a crime, I tell you.”
    Then she turned and bounded enthusiastically up the granite steps. Before I could change my mind about the whole visit, she was knocking on the large oak door.
    She was practically bubbling with excitement. I wished I felt the same way, but I mostly felt nervous. We could be confronting a killer … what if he figured out who I really was?
    The door opened and a man of medium build looked out at us. He wore a casual shirt and slate