Murder, Plain and Simple by Isabella Alan Read Free Book Online

dripped with doubt. He stared at me, and for a second time, I felt myself fidget under his blue-green-eyed gaze. I gritted my teeth and stared him back in the eye. I wasn’t going to let some small-time sheriff intimidate me.
    Mitchell reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and removed a white business card. “You think of anything else, you call me anytime.”
    Without examining it, I stuffed it into my purse.
    He seemed to recognize the defiance in my expression and smiled. “Against my better judgment, you’re free for now, even if you are a prime flight risk.”
    “Flight risk?”
    “You have no friends or family here. There’s nothing keeping you here.”
    I straightened my spine. “I do have friends in Holmes County. You don’t know anything about me.”
    “I will soon enough.”
    “I’m not a flight risk,” I muttered.
    “Prove it. Don’t leave town.”
    I glared at him.
    “And watch where you’re walking, too. I don’t want to have to pick you up off of the ground again.” With that, Mitchell went inside the shop and left me with my mouth hanging open.
    Heat rushed to my face. Ugh. He
did
remember.
    As soon as Mitchell disappeared into the house, Rachel ran across the street, dodging officers as she went. “Angie, what’s going on? When my husband told me there were police cars outside your shop, I couldn’t believe it.” She gave me a big hug. “Did someone break into Running Stitch?”
    “Yes, but it’s more than that.” I pursed my lips. “It’s Joseph Walker. He’s dead.”
    She gasped. “Dead?”
    “I found him in the stockroom.”
    “What was he doing there?”
    “I have no idea,” I murmured. “It only gets worse, Rachel. Joseph Walker was murdered.”
    “Murdered,” she whispered. “That can’t be possible.”
    I glanced at the shop door. “I think the sheriff believes I killed him.”
    “He couldn’t possibly think that,” she insisted.
    I didn’t bother to argue with her.
    Rachel wrapped her arm around me. “Do you need anything?”
    “Do you make doughnuts in your bakery?”
    She was taken aback by the question. I had to admit it wasn’t an obvious transition to anyone but me.
    “Not usually, but we can,” Rachel said.
    “Could you make one as big as my head?”
    The EMTs wheeled the body bag out of the shop on a stretcher. The coroner followed close behind.
    I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’m changing my order. I think I need two head-sized doughnuts.”

Chapter Six
    T he sheriff followed the stretcher out of the shop. His jaw set as he held a clear plastic evidence bag in his hand. The rotary cutters were inside the bag.
Rachel stared wide-eyed at the bag. “Aren’t those yours, Angela?”
    Her comment got Mitchell’s attention, and a chill ran down my back.
    He held up the bag in his left hand, and I noted the lack of a wedding ring. I gave myself a mental head smack.
Why is my brain even registering the mundane fact that the sheriff isn’t married at a time like this?
    He let the bag dangle from his long piano-player fingers. “Is this yours, Miss Braddock?”
    I swallowed. “Yes, but then again, everything in the shop’s mine. It’s my shop.”
    He nodded. “What are these?”
    “Rotary cutters. They’re used to cut fabric more quickly along a straightedge.”
    “Have you touched them?”
    “Yes, but not since the day before the party.”
    “What party?”
    I told him about the grand reopening.
    “Who else might have touched the cutters?”
    “No one.”
    He cocked an eyebrow at me.
    “I mean no one except whoever did that to poor Joseph Walker. I put the whole box of the cutters in the stockroom the day before the party and didn’t think about them again until—” The image of Joseph’s wound sprang into my mind, and I had the urge to stick my head between my knees. Rachel gripped me by the upper arm as if she thought I might keel over. She might have been right.
    Mitchell lowered the evidence bag and gave me a