Dead Bolt by juliet blackwell Read Free Book Online

to carry on as usual. If they decided to sell the house to Emile Blunt, I doubted he would require the further services of Turner Construction. But ghosts or no ghosts, I couldn’t imagine Jim Daley abandoning his Cheshire House dream so easily.
    But I wasn’t able to turn onto Union Street; it was blocked by a police cruiser. A young, fresh-faced uniformed officer was turning away traffic, insisting there was “nothing to see.”
    Nothing but an ambulance, a paramedic truck, and a half-dozen police cars, red and blue emergency lights flashing.
    Right in front of Cheshire House.

Chapter Five
    I should have tried harder to convince them to leave last night, I thought as I double-parked and jumped out, taking time only to crack the window for the dog.
    Running, I said a flurry of silent prayers that nothing had happened to Jim or Katenka or . . . worst of all, to the baby.
    As I pushed my way through the small crowd of curious onlookers, my concern for the young family vied with wondering how to explain this to the police: You see, officer, there were mysterious footprints, and a shad-owlike figure, a strange dark cloud.
    That ought to go over big.
    But the stretcher with the blanket-covered body didn’t roll out of Cheshire House. It came from across the street—Emile Blunt’s upholstery shop.
    Relief washed over me. But on its heels came shame.
    Could that too-still form on the stretcher be Emile? What had my parting words been? “Move it, old man, before I run you down” ?
    No matter how obnoxious the old upholsterer was, I should have held my tongue.
    And then I saw a familiar face in the crowd near the ambulance.
    “Dad?”
    To my knowledge, Dad hadn’t set foot on a job site since I had taken over the management of Turner Construction two years ago.
    I felt suddenly wary. My dad was in his midsixties, but he still had a decent form, wiry and strong. I had never seen him become violent, but if he felt threatened—or more to the point, if he felt his daughter was being threatened—he might lash out enough to do some damage. And the truth was that ever since my mom’s death, his behavior had been less than entirely predictable. Could he have—?
    “I found the poor guy on the floor of his shop,” Dad said. “Looked like a bullet wound. Lots of blood, I’m sorry to say.”
    A woman walked up to us, her head held high, her carriage elegant, as though she’d been trained to walk while balancing a fat book of etiquette on her head. Tall, solid, strong-looking. Regal.
    “This is my daughter, Inspector,” said Dad. “She’s the general contractor on the job site across the street.”
    “Good morning,” she said, flashing a shiny SFPD badge. “I’m homicide inspector Annette Crawford. You’re Melanie Turner? Your father tells me you knew the deceased.”
    “Yes, I didn’t know him all that well, but as the neighbor.”
    “And as a pain in your ass?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Homeless fellow over there says you threatened the victim last night.”
    Dad looked at me, eyebrows lifted. I felt the sting of a blush.
    “I didn’t threaten him, exac—”
    Inspector Crawford glanced at her notebook. “‘ Move it or I’ll run you over. ’ Something like that?”
    Dad rolled his eyes.
    “Um . . . okay. But I didn’t—”
    “I’m not accusing you of homicide, Ms. Turner.” The inspector paused, and I would have sworn there was a silent “yet” at the end of that sentence. “Just trying to put together the sequence of last night’s events.”
    “Yes,” I conceded. “We had words.”
    “What time was this?”
    “I had just left the job site for the day, so a little after five.”
    “Tell me what happened, as precisely as you can.”
    I tried to recall our talk. Mostly I remembered being annoyed.
    “It was nothing new—we’d had the same conversation a thousand times before. He was complaining about the noise and the mess of the construction project. But I can assure you we’re in full