Death Threads by Elizabeth Lynn Casey Read Free Book Online

don’t hear those sounds at a festival. The only thing we hear is laughter. And an occasional screaming kid.”
    “I’ve heard a few expletives myself.” Tori pulled the paper from under her arm and held it out to Milo. “In fact, I’ve heard threats.”
    “Threats?” Milo swapped the funnel cake for the paper. “What kind of threats?”
    “Well, Carter Johnson said he wanted to burn the news tent down.”
    Milo’s head snapped back. “That doesn’t sound like Carter at all.”
    “I know. I thought the same thing.”
    “Now that you mention it though, Dirk Rogers said something about shoving a computer in places a computer shouldn’t be shoved.”
    Tori gestured toward the paper. “I’m thinking that whatever has everyone so fired up is on page three. At least that’s what the kid in the tent said.”
    “Page three,” Milo repeated as he unfolded the paper and flipped back the front page. “Page three—ah, here we go. The only thing here is Colby’s—oh no . . .”
    “What?”
    “Oh no,” he mumbled again, as Ella May moved in from one side and Tori from the other. “Oh, Colby, what did you do?”
    “What are you talking—” She stopped, midsentence, as the object of Milo’s displeasure sprang into view in the form of a bold black headline that stretched from one side of the page to the other.
    SWEET BRIAR’S HISTORIC REBIRTH A FRAUD.
    A slightly smaller headline sat just below the first.
     
    Moonshine—Not Yankees—to Blame for
Town’s Incineration
     
    Lenin once said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
    While it’s anyone’s guess what specific event sparked his comment, he could—in theory—have been talking about Sweet Briar.
    For well over a century—in homes across our town—the story of Sweet Briar’s rise-from-the-ashes rebirth has been passed around the table along with the okra. It’s been written on blackboards in the elementary school and preached as gospel on more than its share of Sunday mornings. It’s been passed down as truth through the Johnsons, the Rogerses, the Clemmonses, and every other founding family, including my in-laws.
    But I’m here to tell you it’s all been a fairy tale. Or, to be more blunt, an out-and-out lie.
    Well, 90 percent of it anyway.
    There was a fire. And it did reduce Sweet Briar to ash. That part is true. It’s just the celebrated how—the part that’s been flaunted for generations and generations—that is nothing short of a bold-faced lie.
    Yankees didn’t burn Sweet Briar to the ground. Gabe Jameson’s great-great-grandfather did.
    That’s right, my fellow Sweet Briar residents, our town didn’t rise from the ashes of an enemy attack. We rose from the flames of a moonshine snafu.
    Tori sucked in her breath as she scanned the rest of Colby’s column, the enormity of his charge bringing a new clarity to Carter Johnson’s words. “The matches were for the tent . . . the rifle must have been for . . .” The words trailed from her mouth as reality dawned.
    “What rifle? What are you talking about?” Milo asked.
    She met Milo’s worried eyes with her own. “Matches weren’t the only thing Carter Johnson wanted to bring back after he read this. He said”—she swallowed over the sudden lump in her throat, her words growing raspy—“he said a rifle might not be a bad idea either.”
    “A rifle?” Ella May ran the tips of her fingers slowly down the article in front of them, her gaze never leaving the paper. “Why on earth would he need a rifle?”
    Pushing the paper in Ella May’s direction, Milo raked a hand through his hair in frustration. “Why? Because Colby Calhoun just destroyed a legacy with the sweep of his pen . . . and placed himself firmly on the top of everyone’s Most Hated list in the process.”

Chapter 4

    From the moment she stepped inside Melissa Davis’s home the aura was anything but normal. In fact, if she didn’t know any better, Tori would have thought she was at a funeral