If She Should Die by Carlene Thompson Read Free Book Online

awful scared, but I’m still alive.” A haunted look clouded his clear blue eyes. “I always thought I was dreaming about me, but now I think I was dreaming about Dara. But how could I have known she was in the water all wrapped up in plastic, Christy? How did I know?”

CHAPTER 3
1
    Christine stiffened. “Jeremy, don’t tell anyone else about those dreams.”
    Jeremy looked puzzled. “How come?”
    How could Christine tactfully explain the conclusion some people might draw? Many thought the mentally challenged were capable of anything. Christine had been protecting Jeremy from that ignorant type for as long as she could remember. Now he was talking about dreams that might lead people to believe he’d killed Dara and thrown her body in the river, then didn’t have enough sense not to talk about it.
    “People can misunderstand things,” Christine said casually. “They might not realize you were talking about
dreams
. They might—”
    “Think I hurt Dara,” Jeremy interrupted sagely. “Some people are really mean.”
    “Yes. And some just aren’t too smart.”
    “Like me.”
    “No, not like you. You’re smart in all the ways that count. A lot of other people aren’t.” They walked throughthe showroom to the storeroom and the rear entrance. “They get things all turned around in their minds, or they think they know a lot about subjects when they really don’t have a clue.”
    “Is Deputy Winter like that?”
    “I don’t know. I just met him.”
    “He seemed nice.”
    “Yes. But as I said, we don’t know him. So I especially don’t want you mentioning the dreams to him.”
    “Because he’s the police?”
    “Because we don’t know him,” Christine ended lamely. Of course because he was the police. Three years ago, Sheriff Buck Teague had been convinced Jeremy had done something to Dara. He was probably still convinced. God only knew what Deputy Winter thought. She could tell he was sharper than Teague. And he’d been a detective in Los Angeles before he came to Winston.
Why
he had come to Winston was a mystery. So was he. A mystery that could pose a threat to Jeremy if the body turned out to be Dara’s and Winter held the same opinion of the mentally challenged as Sheriff Teague.
    “You look worried,” Jeremy said as they stepped out the back door onto the small parking lot. “Are you worried about my dreams?”
    Christine raised her umbrella, then locked the back door of the store. “It’s been a bad day. The rain, the flooding, the body. I’m just a little depressed.”
    “I don’t feel too happy, either.” They hurried to her small car in the rear parking lot. Jeremy tucked his rangy body into the bucket seat. She opened her side, shut the umbrella, tossed it onto the backseat, then climbed in to meet Jeremy’s look of childish appeal. “I really wish you’d get a car like Reynaldo’s.”
    “That’s a vintage 1957 Thunderbird he spent about three years restoring. I’m not up to the job. It’s alsoexpensive, and I just bought us a fairly big house.”
    “And wouldn’t that T-Bird look cool sitting in the driveway?” Jeremy persisted winningly. “It’s even red, my favorite color.”
    “I agree that it’s a great car,” Christine said, thinking of how much Dara had loved riding around in it when she’d dated Reynaldo. “Unfortunately, my
uncool
little blue car will have to do for now.”
    “Well, maybe someday we can have one like Rey’s,” Jeremy said wistfully. “Christy, I feel real bad for thinking about food when Dara might be dead, but I can’t help it. I’m really hungry and nobody’s home.”
    “Nobody? How do you know Patricia isn’t home?”
    “This morning when she brought me to work she told me to fix a sandwich for dinner. She said she had to go out.”
    “Out where? To dinner?”
    Jeremy shrugged. “I don’t know. She doesn’t tell me things and I haven’t heard Ames asking her about being gone so much.”
    “She’s gone a