If Fried Chicken Could Fly by Paige Shelton Read Free Book Online

the same spot. Jim’s chair hadn’t moved from where he’d left it. The other desk’s chairs seemed to be in their right spots, too.
    I walked to the front of the room and found what I thought could have made the noise.
    A pair of handcuffs, an old antique pair was on the floor. I was almost, but not one hundred percent, certain they hadn’t been on the floor before.
    “Huh,” I said as I crouched to gather the cuffs. They were old and very heavy. I didn’t know what sort of metals had been used over the years to create handcuffs, but these weresolid and would be a burden to someone’s wrists and shoulders if they had to wear them for too long.
    They must have fallen off the wall because of a vibration caused when Jim closed the door, I reasoned. But they hadn’t fallen off the wall until a few minutes after he left, I thought to myself.
    “Delayed reaction?” I said quietly as I stood to place them back where they had come from.
    They were rusted and had thick and wicked bars that closed around the wrists of captured criminals. The curved parts where wrists were placed seemed small and tight. I couldn’t help but slip one of my own into the curve. There was nothing unusual about the size of my wrists, but the cuffs were tight and painful against the wrist bone. Time had certainly made handcuffs more comfortable and a better fit for different sizes.
    As I studied the cuffs and contemplated whether or not more comfortable versions were deserved, Cliff came through the door, holding folders and a big black bag that resembled the one that Jim had used for the fingerprint equipment.
    He paused when he saw me, glanced at my hands and said, “Jim told me I wasn’t supposed to ever touch the cuffs.”
    “These fell. I was just putting them back,” I said as I pulled my wrist from the loop. Even that maneuver squeezed the bone and sent a twinge of pain up to my elbow. I wouldn’t show it, though. In fact, I was going to concentrate on not showing anything except a cool detachment. Who cared if Cliff Sebastian was back in town? Besides, I had bigger concerns than the ghost of my previous love life coming back to haunt me.
    Cliff raised an eyebrow but then turned and took the bag and folders to his desk. He looked at Gram before turning back toward me.
    “How’s she doing, B…etts,” he said, as though he’d remembered that he was the only one who called me B and it might now be an inappropriate familiarity.
    “She’s been asleep since we got here.” I looked for an empty hook or nail, but there were so many cuffs it wasn’t an easy task.
    “That’s probably good. She needs her rest. We need her alert so she can help us find who killed Everett Morningside.”
    I found a nail, but I had to maneuver the cuffs in between a bunch of others. I was sure I’d cause more to fall. “You don’t think Gram was the killer, then?”
    He hesitated. “I hope not.”
    He wasn’t totally schooled in police-talk; he wanted to be careful with what he said and not commit to a particular conclusion.
    I made sure the cuffs were stable before I turned again and looked at Cliff. His concentration was focused on a manila folder that he held like an open prayer book. I hoped he wouldn’t look up for a second so I could get a good, critical, well-lit look at him.
    There was no question that he wasn’t a ghost. He was real, as real as Cliff had ever been. I wished that when he’d left Broken Rope all those years ago, he hadn’t stayed so firmly in my heart. As I inspected him, it was as if something woke up in my chest, something opened and breathed for the first time in years.
    Oh crap, I was in trouble. I put my hand on my chest andtold my thawing heart to freeze right back up, because falling for a married man was not only a mistake, it was a
huge
mistake and could mess up lots of lives.
    I didn’t know this Cliff any more than he knew this Betts. We were over ten years older and had both traveled through our twenties, the