Strolling Into Danger (A Seagrove Cozy Mystery Book 6) by Leona Fox Read Free Book Online

innocence.
     
    “You don’t strike me as the kind of woman to sit back and let a man get the last word.” Sadie arched her eyebrows and Rupa bristled.
     
    “Of course I’ve had lovers,” she said in a tone that said all circus people took lovers and Sadie was stupid if she didn’t know that.
     
    “But I always put Maestro first. He always puts himself first too. We have that in common.” She scowled.
     
    “Now go away. I did not kill Pabelin. I did not like her, but I did not kill her. I am tired of talking to you.”
     
    “You didn’t answer my question,” Sadie said.
     
    She stood firm, ready to refuse to leave if she didn’t get the information she wanted.
     
    “You want to know who I have slept with?” She sneered at Sadie.
     
    “I don’t think there is a man between eighteen and sixty that I haven’t slept with. Oh, you are shocked, but Maestro did not turn a hair. Not one of them, or all of them put together could make him jealous. They did not make him want me more. Or less. He simply does not care. So now, the first thing I do when a man joins the circus is to seduce him. And they all fall. Married, not married, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes even openly gay men will sleep with me. It’s a rite of passage.”
     
    Sadie left feeling strangely queasy. What must it be like to be the wife of one of Rupa’s conquests? Or the husband of Maestro’s? Maybe it was part of the culture, something that was expected and accepted. She was glad it wasn’t a culture she was born into. How unhappy it would make her to know her guy was running around with other women. Ugh.
     
    She started back toward where she thought the business trailer must be, but she heard a woman crying from nearby and stopped. She followed the sound to a trailer very near to the one that Sadie thought belonged to the dead woman. She knocked lightly on the door.
     
    The crying stopped abruptly and someone blew their nose rather loudly before the door opened. A dark-haired woman in her early thirties stood in the doorway, her eyes red and swollen.
     
    “Yes? Can I help you?” She dabbed at her nose with her tissue.
     
    “I was wondering if I could help you,” Sadie replied. “Are you alright?”
     
    “No. How can I be alright? My sister is dead. She was all I had in the world.” Tears seeped from the corners of her eyelids.
     
    “You also have a niece, and she will need you as much as you need her,” Sadie chided.
     
    “Alena has never liked me,” a sob escaped her.
     
    “And she is grown now. I will be alone.”
     
    Sadie considered giving the woman a piece of her mind but remembered she had just lost her sister. Hopefully, she would pull out of it and come to realize the younger woman needed her.
     
    “Do you know who would want to kill your sister?” Sadie asked. “There was a man fighting with her in her tent the day before, wasn’t there?”
     
    “That man? Why would he kill her? He was upset, yes, but he was no killer. There are two men who would kill my sister. One in Maestro Street, who she insulted, the other is Win-,” She stopped talking, her gaze fixed on something behind Sadie. Sadie turned and looked. The Strongman stood leaning against the plywood fence watching them.
     
    Pabelin’s sister backed up two steps and closed the door in Sadie’s face. Sadie walked down the steps and turned away from the Strongman, moving in the direction she hoped would lead her to Zack. The Strongman followed. She quickened her step. The Strongman quickened his. She slowed, the Strongman slowed. She didn’t like the fear that had gripped her heart so she took a breath and turned to face him. He wasn’t there.
     
    Sadie thought she saw his shadow on the ground between two trailers, but for such a big, bulky man he’d disappeared with surprising fluidity. She was left feeling uneasy and hurried to find Zack. She found him somewhere in the maze of motorhomes and trailers headed his way.
     
    “Have you