Stranded by Lorena McCourtney Read Free Book Online Page B

knew she was anxious to get out of here and go talk to Dr. Sugarman about the job in his vet clinic.
    “So, what do you think?” I said to Abilene, thinking we’d hurry this along so she could be on her way. She still needed to see a dentist too, but I knew that for her that came second in importance to the job with Dr. Sugarman. “Look okay to you?”
    Although it was an unnecessary question, of course. We didn’t have a smorgasbord of free living quarters from which to choose while we were stranded here in Hello. Abilene nodded approval. I knew Koop would love the place too, with its various nooks and crannies and, undoubtedly, plentiful supply of mice.
    I turned to Kelli. “The house looks wonderful, and we really appreciate your generosity, so—”
    “Let me show you the bedrooms first. I don’t want there to be any unpleasant surprises.”
    Actually I was more curious about the murder than the bedrooms. I hadn’t noticed any blood stains or other signs of violence so far. How had Hiram been murdered? And where? Who’d found the body?
    Yet I thought tact and sensitivity required waiting until Kelli offered the information rather than my demanding it, so I merely followed when she opened a door from the kitchen to a hallway.
    “This part from here on back is an addition that was put on in the ’50s, I think it was. Hiram’s mother, or maybe it was his grandmother, was bedridden, and they needed rooms for more nursing and household help.”
    The long hallway led to a windowless back door. The first two rooms Kelli opened in the addition were empty, but the next one held an impressive array of workout equipment, a treadmill, a stepper, barbells in graduated sizes, and various weight machines.
    “Hiram worked out?” I asked, surprised.
    “No, some wife had all this stuff moved in. I’ve heard she had a trampoline out in the yard too, and she liked to work out on it in her bikini. I heard there was a big jump in the sale of binoculars locally about that time.”
    Yes, I decided, Hiram definitely needed an older woman such as Lucinda O’Mallory.
    The next room looked as if it had been Hiram’s discard room. Or maybe it was his save-it, I-may-need-this-someday room. Piles of newspapers and magazines, a mountain of wadded-up plastic bags, plastic jugs, bits of old, broken furniture, cardboard boxes of all sizes, various-sized chunks of Styrofoam, sacks of old rags, even a couple of old bicycle tires.
    “I’ve been putting it off, but one of these days I’ll have to rent a truck and haul all this stuff to the dump.”
    “Some of it could be recycled.”
    “Just don’t drop a match in here, or the whole town might go up in flames.”
    “We’ll be careful.”
    “There are two furnished bedrooms on this floor,” Kelli went on as she turned and led us in the opposite direction down the wide but dim hallway. “There are also various rooms on the second floor that I suppose were bedrooms. The second floor hasn’t actually been closed off like the third floor has been for years, but I haven’t had the house checked for structural reliability yet, so it would probably be best to use these.”
    She opened a door off the hallway and stood back to let us see inside. “This is the smaller bedroom on this floor. I’ve wondered if it may have been a nursery at one time. There isn’t a private bath, just the bath down the hall.”
    The bedroom may have been a nursery at some time, but the furniture now was old and heavy, probably antique but mismatched and rather worse for wear. Two single-wide beds, a tall chest of drawers, and two nightstands. Two generic, English hunting scenes hung on walls papered with cabbage roses. The carpet, of entwined dark flowers on a blue background, had a faded elegance, and there was also an impressive armoire of more dark, carved wood, probably rather valuable.
    The room was clean, but the beds looked carelessly made up. A crooked sheet hung below the bedspread on one. A book, I