Leighann Dobbs - Mystic Notch 01 - Ghostly Paws by Leighann Dobbs Read Free Book Online Page A

she knew where I was going, but somehow she did.
    I thought back to the morning I’d found Lavinia. Impossible to believe it was just yesterday, but it was. She hadn’t been dead long when I’d found her, so that meant the killer had to make his—or her—escape through town in the morning hours. If I were a killer, I’d want to ditch that murder weapon as fast as I could, which is why I figured it would be somewhere near the library.
    As I stared at the gothic stone building, I realized the killer wouldn’t have come back out the front. There were too many people around on Maine Street.  
    “Meow.” Pandora peeked out from the side of the library, then turned, her tail flicking like a finger beckoning me to follow her.  
    “Good idea, Pandora.” The killer would have gone out the only other door, which was in the back. I followed her around the corner of the library. I’d never been behind the building before and was surprised that the area behind it was so small. It was paved, and there was a dumpster that I hoped I wouldn’t have to jump inside of to find what I was looking for.  
    I chose to look everywhere else first. I walked around the edge of the pavement and looked in the corners of the building. I was squatting down, the side of my head almost on the ground so that I could peer under the dumpster, when I heard a low, guttural animal sound coming from behind me.
    The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I jerked my head around to see Pandora, her back arched, having a stare down with another cat. The other cat was a raggedy looking ginger-colored thing with wild yellow eyes. Three other cats stood about five feet away behind it.  
    I’d heard there was a feral cat colony around here and I guessed these cats were part of it. I noticed a small black and white kitten that couldn’t have been more than six months old with a torn-up ear and my heart tugged. They looked well-fed, though, and I wondered briefly how they found shelter and what they ate.
    I stood motionless, not knowing exactly what to do. Pandora and the other cat must have come to some sort of agreement, because they stopped making their noises and the other cat and his minions backed up.
    Pandora trotted off after them and I could just barely make out a trail into the woods. The train tracks were back there somewhere—it would be a perfect get-away route for the killer! The tracks wandered behind several buildings then crossed Main Street at the other end of town. The killer could have run down them, then popped back out onto the street as if he had never been near the library.
    I rushed in after Pandora, scanning the ground for something that could be the murder weapon.  
    She stopped in front of me and that’s when I saw it.  
    It had been thrown off to the side and was half-buried in the leaves, but I recognized the part of it that was sticking up … it was the heavy metal embosser Lavinia used to emboss the pages of the books with the library insignia. The library had three of them and, apparently, no one had noticed one was missing.
    I stepped off the trail toward the embosser, bending down to get a better look. Yep, that was definitely the library’s embosser. A thread of navy blue fabric caught on one of the screws flapped in the wind … and was that blood on the side?
    My heart thudded in my chest as I reached out to pick it up …
    “Stop right there! Put your hands in the air, stand up slowly and turn around!”

Chapter Nine

    A steely gray glare coming from the broad shouldered behemoth who was holding the gun on me rooted me to the spot. Adrenalin shot through my body as my mind registered a chiseled jaw, trim waist and sheriff’s uniform.  
    Sheriff’s uniform?
    Augusta was the sheriff here, and this guy sure as heck wasn’t Augusta.
    “Who the hell are you?” I probably should have asked more nicely, but I was mad … and a little scared.
    His left eyebrow quirked up and I thought I saw a smile tease the