High Rhymes and Misdemeanors by Diana Killian Read Free Book Online Page A

what direction to run in.
    Inch by inch Grace raised her head until she could peek over the windowsill. Her heart froze.
    One of her captors sat at a table reading The Sun, and smoking. Facing the hall and the stairs leading to Grace’s prison, his back was to the window where Grace stood, otherwise her escape would have ended then and there. He read on unperturbed.
    Grace spotted a wig and rubber mask tossed carelessly amid the Indian take-out containers. She studied the square set of his shoulders. He had long dark hair in a ponytail with a thick gray streak down the back. Grace was sure she would recognize him by that distinguishing feature alone.
    Her eyes darted around the room. Her suitcases were tossed carelessly in the corner. Everything had been dumped out and pawed through. She could see one of her little apothecary bottles smashed on the floor. The two Regency romances she had brought were sitting on the table next to the man’s elbow. She did not see her purse or keys anywhere.
    Perhaps they were still in her car? She weighed the risk of creeping round to the front of the house on the slim chance that her captors had conveniently left her keys in the ignition. What if the man in the house noticed she was gone? What if the Queen Mother returned? She could only too vividly picture herself caught in the headlights of the Queen Mother’s van.
    Grace turned from the window and picked her way on tiptoe through the overgrown vegetable patch. Behind a broken-down shed she located a footpath and ran, pushing through the bracken, heading for the hills.

3
    “I ’m sorry, Miss Hollister, there’s no answer.”
    “Can’t you send someone out there?” Grace demanded, her fingers tightening on the mug of hot tea she held between both hands.
    P.C. Kenton looked uncomfortable. “The thing of it is, miss,” he began to explain, “Mr. Fox left word with the Innisdale police that he’s away on business till next week. A buying trip of some sort. They’ve left a message on his machine. There’s really no point in sending anyone over.”
    And you don’t believe me anyway, Grace thought bitterly.
    She had walked for hours in the rain last night, covering miles of lonely dirt track before a dairy truck had picked her up.
    The driver clearly thought she was yet another demented Yankee tourist, and at the first village they had come to had been only too happy to hand Grace straight over to the police station.
    The police, or P.C. Kenton as it turned out, had been shocked and sympathetic. He had energetically wasted several hours with Grace exploring the country’s back roads (and getting lost several times) before finding the right deserted farmhouse. Grace’s car had been parked out front, keys hanging in the ignition. Her packed suitcases were inside.
    “My suitcases were in the house,” Grace told the constable. “They put them here for some reason.”
    “For what reason, miss?”
    Grace shook her head.
    The house itself was locked. Inside there was no sign that anyone had been there except for footsteps in the layers of dust and some rice grains on the battered table in the kitchen.
    “There will be glass from the broken window up-stairs,” Grace told the constable, reading the doubt on his face.
    They trooped upstairs, and sure enough there was a small pile of glass glittering in the dust behind the bedroom door.
    “There, you see!” Grace said triumphantly.
    P.C. Kenton nodded. He seemed more uncomfortable than reassured.
    “Shouldn’t you at least take photos of the foot-prints?” Grace urged.
    P.C. Kenton had obligingly taken photos, but it was clearly to humor Grace.
    “It’s not that I don’t believe you, miss,” P.C. Kenton added now, hastily, as though reading Grace’s face. “It’s plain as punch you’ve been through … well, something . But the thing of it is …”
    “Yes, I know,” Grace sighed. “I’ve got my car back and most of my belongings, and since there’s no trace of