Dead Giveaway by Joanne Fluke Read Free Book Online Page A

names, everyone in her class knew that the Bluebirds were the fast group, the Robins were average, and the Larks were slow. She was thinking about Billy Zabinski as she let herself out the front door and walked to her car. Mrs. Percy wouldn’t have a speck of trouble with him. She was his grandmother.
    It was strange turning onto the highway at twelve-thirty on a weekday. Ellen inched out carefully to pass a Northern States Power truck and glanced in her rearview mirror to make sure there was plenty of room before she cut back into her own lane again. This would be a very bad time to have an auto accident. She was still a little dazed by the news.
    Exactly seven minutes later, Ellen pulled into the carport at the Elmwood Apartments and got out to plug her car into the socket on the post next to her parking place. Without her electrical engine heater, the oil would thicken and the water in her radiator would freeze in the subzero temperature. The first time Ellen had used it, she’d forgotten to pull the plug in the morning and had trailed the extension cord down the highway, to the amusement of everyone else on the road. By now the whole process was part of her daily winter ritual, but she still double-checked.
    Ellen trudged up the stairs to her second-floor apartment and unlocked the door. Her familiar apartment seemed suddenly strange to her, the wall hangings and furniture and plants she’d chosen so carefully now alien, as if she were viewing them through the eyes of a stranger. There was a name for that phenomenon, the opposite of déjà vu. She’d memorized it once for a psychology class, but she couldn’t remember it now.
    In an effort to clear her head, Ellen walked down the hallway to the guest room. She’d rented a two-bedroom apartment so she’d have a place to work on her dolls, and the room was filled with her life-size creations. The hobby had taken hold when she was still in high school, something to keep her occupied while the prettier girls were going out on dates.
    Her very first doll was propped up in a chair. She’d sewn nylon stockings together and stuffed them to make a doll big enough to wear one of her mother’s old dresses. It wasn’t a very professional job, but Ellen had kept it for sentimental reasons. Over the years, she’d made dolls out of any material she could find. One from an old patchwork quilt found in a thrift store reminded her of the illustration on the cover of her favorite children’s book, L. Frank Baum’s Patchwork Girl of Oz. Scattered all around her guest room were dolls made of velvet and silk and chintz. There was even one made of durable canvas that she’d propped up in the passenger seat as company on her long drive to Minnesota.
    Ellen reached out to straighten a hat on her very best doll. Designed in a college art class at the University of Virginia, its molded plastic arms and legs could be locked into any position, much like department store mannequins. Its features were perfectly neutral, an inspiration prompted by studying her roommate’s teddy bear. Teddy bears could look happy or sad, comical or serious, depending entirely on the viewer’s perception.
    She’d run out of flesh-tone dye one Saturday night, and rather than risk being late with her final project, Ellen had attempted to mix the dye herself from what was available on the workroom shelves. Mixing a flesh tone from basic colors was difficult, and she’d added a drop of this and a drop of that until she’d finally achieved a color that looked acceptable, despite the fact that it didn’t exactly match the premixed color. She hadn’t realized the result was anything out of the ordinary until she’d taken her project back to the dorm.
    Her roommate, Ming Toi Lee, had gazed at it in awe. How had she ever achieved that lovely skin tone? She’d never seen a Chinese mannequin before and it was about time someone appealed to