Shay O'Hanlon Caper 03 - Pickle in the Middle Murder by Jessie Chandler. Read Free Book Online

tiny apartment above the Rabbit Hole. Buttercream yellow paint covered three walls, and the fourth was taken up by mostly empty built-in bookshelves. A couple of filing cabinets and a new, buckskin-colored leather loveseat filled the rest of the room.
    I set the backpack on the floor and dropped heavily into the desk chair. It squeaked as I leaned back and closed my eyes.
    Everything that happened after five o’clock today was a surreal blur. I still could not wrap my mind around exhibit A: I’d found a dead body in an outhouse and that body had been iced. Smoked. Murdered.
    Or exhibit B: a cop who apparently hated JT had arrested her, dragged her away, and locked her up like a common criminal. My JT, the maker and keeper of justice and the American way.
    Then there was exhibit C: Russell Krasski. A man who did dastardly things, including trafficking children , had beaten the system and walked after JT’d wigged out and whomped him. I could feel the depth of self-hatred JT must have harbored against herself—and must still. I shuddered in my chair. It must have been absolutely awful knowing you were the one who was responsible for putting that spineless bastard back on the street. Would I have done the same thing had I been in her shoes? Probably. I suppose it depended on whatever Krasski had said that set JT off. I didn’t lose my temper all that often, but when I did, it was a doozy. I really wondered what buttons he’d tweaked that pushed her into the deep end of the pool—wondered if she’d ever feel comfortable enough to tell me.
    My day at the Ren Fest ran in Technicolor on the video screen of my mind. JT had been gone a lot longer than I’d expected fetching my pickle. I didn’t know exactly where she was or what she’d been doing during that time, but I was sure there was no way she shot anyone. Wasn’t I? Then I thought about the tangy wet spots on her shirt. The pickle chunks. Krasski had a pickle crammed down his throat … were the bits and pieces clinging to her shirt from that same pickle? I couldn’t blame JT if she had indeed plugged him then stuffed him, though it still ate at me that she hadn’t shared what had happened. She had to know by now that I would’ve completely understood.
    Christ on a cracker, this was a lot for my poor gray matter to work through. I scrubbed a hand over my face and pressed on my temples. If JT had seen Krasski during her pickle quest, she theoretically could’ve followed him into the privies. The rowdy crowd watching the Tortuga Twins had been geared up, screaming at top decibel, and I wasn’t sure if a gunshot would have been heard through the ruckus.
    With a wheezing sigh, I sat up and watched the screensaver swirl its colorful patterns on the computer. Coop still hadn’t returned my calls, momentarily distracting me from my morose thoughts. For the seventy-sixth time, I wondered what was going on at the protest up in Duluth. Open Rabbit Hole bills lay scattered off to one side of my desk, and my mind skipped from Coop to finances. Stress-induced ADD? I randomly picked up the electric bill and thought inanely that the total due seemed high. Costs just kept going up. And up. I tossed the bill on top of haphazardly stacked, color-coded Rabbit Hole file folders next to the computer.
    My eyes caught a framed 5x7 photo of JT and me that I’d set close to my workspace, snapped a few months ago when we’d taken off for a long weekend in Duluth. We were on the pier at Canal Park, standing on the stairs leading to the lighthouse at the canal entrance, grinning like fools in love at the camera. JT was a step above me, her arms tightly wrapped around my shoulders. I loved that picture. It froze in time a moment of new love in carefree abandon. We needed to find that abandon again very soon.
    I reached out a trembling finger and traced JT’s face. Her long hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and wisps floated around her face in the breeze. Sunglasses rested on the top of