HEARTBREAKER by Julie Garwood Read Free Book Online Page A

to be proof somewhere, maybe even in her own front yard, where she kept Daddy chained on sunny days so he could take in some fresh air. If there was any evidence around, by God, she’d find it. The investigation was on her shoulders and hers alone. Sister had cut short her vacation in Des Moines and had made her cousin drive her home when she heard the news. She was trying to help, but she wasn’t much use, not with her bad eyesight and her vanity making it impossible for her to put on the tortoiseshell bifocals Bessie Jean now regretted she’d ever told her made her look plumb bug-eyed. Certainly no one else was going to help look for evidence of foul play because no one else cared a hoot, not even that no-good Sheriff Lloyd MacGovern. He hadn’t liked Daddy much, not since he’d gotten away from her and taken a bite out of Sheriff Lloyd’s ample ass. But, even so, you’d think he would have had the decency to stop by her house and offer his condolences on Daddy’s passing when there she and Sister were, sitting just one short block away from the town square where his office was located. Shame on him, Bessie Jean told Sister. It didn’t matter if he liked Daddy or not, he should still do his duty and find out who murdered him.
    Not everyone in Holy Oaks was being callous, Sister reminded her. Others living in the valley were being very thoughtful and sensitive. They knew how much Daddy meant to Bessie Jean. That uppity next door neighbor of theirs with her fancy French name, Laurant, had turned out to be the most thoughtful and sensitive of all. Why, what would they have done if she hadn’t heard Bessie Jean wailing and come running lickety-split to help? Bessie Jean had been down on her knees, leaning over poor dead Daddy, and Laurant had helped her to her feet and put her and Sister in her car, then had run back, unchained Daddy and scooped him up in her arms, real gentlelike, and put him in the trunk. Daddy was already stiff and as cold as a stone, but Laurant still had sped all the way to Doctor Basham’s offices and had run Daddy inside as quick as she could on the hope that maybe the doctor could perform a miracle.
    Since there weren’t any miracles being dispensed that dark day, the doctor had put Daddy in the freezer to await the autopsy Bessie Jean insisted on. Then Laurant had driven her and Sister over to Doctor Sweeney’s office to get their blood pressure checked because Bessie Jean was still terribly distraught, and Sister was feeling light-headed.
    Laurant turned out not to be so uppity after all. In all her eighty-two years, Bessie Jean wasn’t one to ever change her mind after she’d made it up, but in this instance she did just that. After she’d gotten past her initial shock and hysterics over losing Daddy, she realized what a kind-hearted soul Laurant was. She was still a foreigner, of course. She came to Holy Oaks from that city of sin and debauchery, Chicago, but that was all right. The city hadn’t rubbed off on her. She was still a good girl. The nuns who had raised her at that fancy boarding school in Switzerland had instilled strong values. Bessie Jean, as rigid and set in her ways as she liked to think she was, decided that she could stand to have one or two foreigners for friends. She surely could.
    Sister suggested they stop mourning Daddy’s passing long enough to bake a tart apple pie for Laurant—it was the neighborly thing to do—but Bessie Jean chided her for having such a poor memory and forgetting that the Winston twins were looking after Laurant’s corner drugstore while she drove all the way down to Kansas City. She’d said she wanted to surprise her brother, that good-looking priest with such nice thick hair that the young girls at Holy Oaks College were always drooling over. They would have to wait until Monday to bake because that was the day Laurant was expected home.
    Once both sisters had decided that Laurant was no longer an outsider, they naturally felt it