Murder on a Hot Tin Roof by Amanda Matetsky Read Free Book Online Page A

open up! This is urgent! I need to use your phone!”

    Gray’s strange-looking neighbor opened his door right away, looking not quite so strange as before. Instead of a yellow silk kimono, he was wearing a crisp white shirt and a pair of tan trousers. He even had on a tie.

    “Murder?” he spluttered, eyes bugged to the limit. “Did you say murder ?” He yanked his door wide and motioned me inside, eyes protruding even further at the sight of my gory shins. “Omigod!” he shrieked. “Is that blood ? What happened? Are you hurt? Who’s dead? Where is the killer? Is he still in the building?” The man was scared out of his wits. As soon as I walked through his door, he slammed it and locked it again.

    “Don’t worry,” I said, hurrying to calm the poor fellow’s fears. “The murderer’s gone.”

    But the minute those words flew out of my mouth, I realized how wrong they could be. I didn’t know if the killer was still there or not! What an idiot I was! I hadn’t searched the rest of Gray’s apartment! Thinking that Gray had been dead for hours, I had jumped to the conclusion that his slaughterer had fled the premises. But what if I was mistaken? What if the fiend was still in there—hiding in the bedroom closet or behind the shower curtain—waiting to plunge his bloody knife into another hapless victim?

    Oh, my god! I shouldn’t have left Abby in there by herself!

    “Open up!” I cried out to Gray’s neighbor, jumping back over to his double-locked front door, so frantic to get out of there he probably thought I’d lost my senses. “I’ve got to go back across the hall! Please let me out right now! And then call the police immediately. Tell them there’s been a murder and they’ve got to come at once.”

    “Who, me? I can’t call the police! I don’t like them and they don’t like me. And I don’t have their number!”

    “Then get it from the operator!” I screeched, unlocking and opening his door myself. Then I sucked up all my courage (and a big supply of stench-free air) and scrambled back to the murder zone.

     
     
    ABBY WAS NOWHERE IN SIGHT. THE club chair I’d left her sitting in was empty, and the partially concealed passage behind the couch—the area where Gray’s body was lying—was devoid of any other bodies, alive or dead.

    There were lots of bloody footprints, though, stamped all over the floor around Gray’s corpse, and tracked across the thick beige carpet in the living room. A slew of ruddy smudges were concentrated around the legs of the club chair, and several rust-colored streaks stretched from the chair to the small hallway leading to the rear of the apartment.

    Oh, no! What happened while I was gone?! Did the killer grab Abby and drag her into the bedroom to slit her throat?

    “Abby!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, following the rusty streaks across the carpet and part of the way down the hall. “Where are you?!” I was so panicked I was practically howling.

    “Keep your shirt on, Sherlock,” Abby yelled back. “I’m in the bathroom!”

    I felt a giant whoosh of relief, which comforted me for a moment or two, but quickly turned into a blinding surge of anger. “What the hell are you doing in there?” I roared, wrenching open what I thought was the bathroom door. “I told you not to move or touch anything!”

    Oops. Linen closet. I was screaming at a stack of beige bath towels.

    The toilet flushed, then Abby exited the bathroom one door down. “When you gotta go, you gotta go,” she said, “and I wanted to wash the blood off my hands.” When she saw me standing nose-to-nose with the towels, she gave me an exaggeratedly puzzled look. “What are you doing now, Miss Marple? Interrogating the terry cloth?”

    She was putting up a good front—doing her best to act as brave and brazen as usual—but I could tell from her colorless complexion, and the way her lips were quivering, that she was all torn up inside.

    Sidestepping Abby’s