Crime Rib (Food Lovers' Village) by Leslie Budewitz Read Free Book Online

paint.
    Before I could respond, Kim pivoted, instantly ready, at the sound of a scuffle. A harsh voice broke the reverent air.
    “I’m a Lodge guest. You have to let me through.” Gib Knox stood by the side of his dark car, engine idling. He’d stopped inches behind a sheriff’s vehicle. He’d come from the direction of town, and if his tone were any indication, from its bars.
    “Sir.” The deputy made a single polite word into a command.
    “Nice rig,” Kyle whispered to me. He’d always had an eye for cars, unlike me. What was that slick speedy thing he’d been so proud of in high school?
    “You’ll have to drive around,” Kim said. “The deputies will redirect you. That is, if you’re able.”
    “Of course I’m able,” he snapped. He’d ditched the dude getup in favor of dark slacks, loafers, and a chocolate brown leather bomber jacket that looked more natural on him.
    The deputy stepped closer to Gib, sniffed, then gave Kim a quick nod. He circled the car, shining his flashlight. “Looks clean.”
    “Get his statement. All the usual whens and wheres,” Kim said. “Then show him the back entrance and start making the rounds, checking every car in the lots. Tell the desk clerk we’ll need a complete guest list. It’ll be a late night, kids—we’re knocking on every door.”
    Made sense. The driver might have come from the Lodge or been going to it. They needed to know if any cars had been stolen or damaged, and whether anyone had seen anything remotely relevant.
    “Not so fast,” Gib said. The EMTs had closed the doors to the other ambulance and climbed back inside, ready to clear the scene. No sirens, no flashing lights. “I want to know what happened.”
    “There’s been an accident.”
    “No shit, Sherlock.” He may have passed the smell test, but he wouldn’t get good marks for behavior. He spotted Kyle and me. “What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
    “It’s Stacia,” I said. “She went out for a walk. Someone hit her. She—didn’t make it.”
    He stared at me for a long moment, his face pale in the harsh floodlights, then sank against the car. Head down, he breathed heavily, then raised his eyes to mine.
    “I told you. This town is cursed.”
    *   *   *
    B y the time I handed Kim my car keys and she handed me off to a deputy, dark had fully fallen.
    As my chauffeur wound the patrol car south above the lakeshore, I pictured all the roads our unknown driver could have taken. Highways, arterials, residential roads. Driveways and cul-de-sacs leading to houses and more houses, some dark, some lit up in welcome. Or in warning. Rutted back roads that split, twisted, split again, then petered out into abandoned logging roads.
    All the places a guilty driver could have vanished.
    Assuming he knew what he’d done. It might have been a glancing blow that didn’t even register. Or he might have thought he’d hit a small animal and not bothered to stop. Heartless, yes, but it happened all the time.
    In high school, weeks after I got my driver’s license, I hit a cat on the highway. I’d parked my old beater—handed down from my father to my brother, my sister, then me—and carried the limp gray tabby to the nearest house. The owner opened the door and gently took the tiny load. Her expression said she didn’t blame me, but that hadn’t kept me from sobbing for days.
    I thought again of Stacia. Her plans for the future and the friendship we’d just begun. The pictures she’d proudly shared of her young son.
    She’d had spark, ambition, and urban smarts. They’d taken her far, in a cutthroat field. She’d been wearing black, walking on a narrow, country road at night with no flashlight.
    Living in the country took a different kind of smarts.
    That didn’t mean she should have died.
    He—she, whoever—should have stopped.
    *   *   *
    T he deputy raised one eyebrow when I told him where to take me. My first impulse had been to go to my cabin. Restored by