Murder by Serpents (Five Star First Edition Mystery) by Barbara Graham Read Free Book Online

in the ignition, and stepped away.

    “He’s all yours, Doc.” Tony’s eyes lifted and he saw the expression on Wade’s face. Witnessing an autopsy would provoke another bout of upchucking. He decided to let his deputy off the hook. “Let me know when you are ready to do the autopsy and I’ll come down.”

    “You don’t want to send Wade?” The doctor snickered as he zipped the bag closed. “It always adds a little something extra when he faints.”

    “He’s got plenty to do here with the car and in the meantime, I’m going to find Quentin and break the news to the next of kin. Maybe he can shed some light on what happened to this guy.”

C HAPTER F OUR
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    Tony knew Quentin Mize. Not only had he been born and raised in the area, the man was more than slightly familiar with the Park County jail facility. He claimed that it had superior food and what he referred to as “the amenables.” Tony wasn’t sure that he wanted to know what those might be, but he assumed it had something to do with the fact that they gave him aspirin for his inevitable headache. Quentin was usually intoxicated when he arrived, and by the next afternoon would be holding his head in both hands and howling like a coyote.
    They supplied him with aspirin in self-defense.
     
    No street address followed Quentin’s name on the makeshift address label, but Tony knew where his home was. He lived so far up the mountain and in the backwoods that it didn’t have mail delivery. Actually, Quentin had no mailbox, and no mailbox meant no home delivery.

    To get there, Tony drove east out of town, up and down several narrow, winding roads, through a tiny settlement of homes and then onto a dirt road consisting of a pair of ruts running between the trees.
     
    Tony flinched when the Blazer met encroaching branches. When the dirt turned to mud, he had to slip the vehicle into four-wheel drive. The mud was as slick as ice. Up here on the mountain, snow still lay on the ground in the shady spots. There might even be some ice mixed in with the mud.

    Accompanying him was Deputy Sheila Teffeteller, Park County’s solitary female deputy. They did not usually work closely together, but he had left Wade fingerprinting the interior of the car. An attractive woman, only twenty-five, with thick blond hair neatly braided up on the back of her head, Sheila was the most efficient of his deputies. Her paperwork was a pleasure to read. Tony knew that she had grown up in an impoverished area much like the one they were driving through, and it had not stopped her from achieving her goals. “What do you know about Quentin?”

    “You mean besides the fact that he is a dedicated drinker and drug user?” Sheila’s eyebrows lifted and she smiled. She looked as radiant as a bride. “I know that he would rather be naked in that car with all those snakes than be anywhere with me. I beat the snot out of him when I was thirteen. The advantage to growing up with so many brothers was that I knew just where to kick him and I did. Hard. Several times.” At that memory, she giggled.

    Tony didn’t say anything but he smiled at the merry sound.

    “My brother Vernon even took a few swings at him after I had him down in the dirt.” She reined in the merriment, but her eyes still twinkled. “Not long ago I picked him up for public intoxication. The poor man climbed into the back seat and begged me to let him put the handcuffs on himself.”

    As she finished her story, they came around the last curve and stopped in front of Quentin’s home.
     
    It had started out as a white mobile home with charcoal gray shutters and trim. That had been many years ago, and the ensuing years had not been kind. It still surprised Tony that someone had ever managed to tow it up that miserable road without breaking it in half along the way. He could only believe that the road had been better in those days.

    Some years later, the Mizes made a series of “improvements” to the original