Butter Off Dead by Leslie Budewitz Read Free Book Online Page A

back, making room for him and his bag. He reached for Christine’s wrist, then her neck. On her other side, a second EMT saw the pool of blood. Hands in thin blue gloves, he raised her shirt to expose the wound and applied a pad. “Gotta stop this bleeding,” he said, while the first man slid the business end of a stethoscope onto her bare back. Listened to her lungs. Raised his head and I saw the two men’s eyes meet.
    They did all they were supposed to do, but that brief glance confirmed that it would not be enough.
    I sat on my heels.
Not again. Maybe Sally’s right.
    â€œI’m Nick Murphy. My sister and my girlfriend are in there.”
    The strained voiced boomed from the rear of the sanctuary. Zayda had sunk against the back wall, beneath a black-and-gold Asian tapestry. She hugged her knees, her big coat enveloping her and her sadness. A deputy sheriff I did not know blocked Nick’s way.
    â€œI’m sorry, sir. This is a potential crime scene.”
    â€œNick!” I ran down the altar steps and past Christine’s easels and canvases, her worktable littered with tubes and knives and brushes. Past the display cabinets and the walls of paintings. “She’s been shot. She’s bleeding. I’m afraid . . .”
    He pulled me into his arms, and through our coats, I felt my brother’s heart pound, felt him tremble, felt him hold me tight, safe, and I tried to do the same for him.
    *   *   *
    â€œW here have you been?” I asked. Nick wore field gear: water-resistant pants, bright blue knee-high gaiters, boots, mittens that converted into fingerless gloves for note taking. Heavy-duty sun goggles peeked out of an upper pocket in his nylon shell.
    â€œUp in the Jewel Basin, checking my packs.” Wolf-breeding season. Nick tracked the packs by snowshoe or on skis, then watched for denning activity. “What happened?”
    I told him what little I knew, and we stared, arms around each other, as the EMTs finished their work.
    Sheriff’s Detective Kim Caldwell and Undersheriff Ike Hoover arrived at the same time, Ike in full uniform, Kim in jeans, the belt that held her gun, radio, and other gear slung on her hip. Just looking at it gave me back pain. We’d become friendly again since my return to Jewel Bay, but nothing like the past. We’d been best buds from sixth grade, when her family moved back to help her grandparents run the Lodge, right up till February twenty-fourth our senior year. The night my father died, I lost my best friend, too.
    When you get your badge, they give you extra eyes and a swivel in your neck. Both Kim and Ike scanned the old church quickly and thoroughly, seeming to take in everything. Kim spotted Zayda, knelt and said a few words, then stepped outside, phone in hand.
    It hadn’t occurred to me to call her parents. Some friend and mentor I was.
    Ike pulled out a notebook. I perched on one of the leftoverpews, the dark wood polished by decades of backs and bottoms sliding across the grain, and repeated what little I knew. I nearly gagged at the part I didn’t want Nick to hear—the part about the gurgling, the struggle to breathe, to speak. To live.
    â€œShe said
what
?” Ike said.
    â€œShop,” I repeated. “She was asking about my shop. I don’t know why. She was confused. She’d lost a lot of blood.” Shivers overtook me.
    Nick’s eyes darkened and his gaze flicked across the room to the old barrister’s bookcases that held Iggy’s collection of bronzes and Western artifacts. Pain creased his brow. He ran a hand through his dark hair and trained his attention on Ike.
    â€œSheriff.” The second EMT appeared at Ike’s elbow. I recognized him from the lumberyard at Taylor’s Building Supply. They stepped aside, and though we couldn’t hear them, the meaning was clear.
    Christine Vandeberg, of the red hair and colored glasses, my