Sweet and Deadly by Charlaine Harris Read Free Book Online

finished three cups of coffee, two pieces of toast, and fifty pages of the lady’s opulent childhood.
    Then she moved to her favorite chair at the bay window and set herself to think.
    If Leona’s death was connected with the murder of her parents, what could the connection be? Leona and her mother had never been friends. So Leona and her father, nurse and doctor, must have seen, or found out…something to be killed for.
    If that was so, if the two had died because they knew the same thing, had seen the same thing (whatever), why the gap in time between the murders? Catherine asked herself. Could Leona have been so difficult to kill that six months had lapsed before the murderer had had another chance?
    She shifted restlessly. Hers was not the kind of intelligence that asserted itself in orderly trains of reasoning but the kind that mulled in secret and then presented her, so to speak, with a conclusion.
    Instead of undertaking the calm application of logic she had set herself to perform, she found herself dwelling with resentment on the suspicion in James Galton’s face when he told her that the dead woman was Leona Gaites. When Catherine’s restlessness goaded her into the bedroom to begin dressing, she was still gnawing at the shock that suspicion had made her feel.
    While she was brushing her teeth, Catherine decided she was arrogant.
    Why should he not suspect her? In all the mystery novels she had read, the finder-of-the-body was suspect.
    I never realized how much pride I take in being who I am, she thought. I expect my lineage to speak for me; I think “Scott Linton” means “above reproach.” The “Catherine”—that’s the important part. That’s just me.
    She looked in the mirror over the sink and surveyed the toothpaste surrounding her mouth in a white froth.
    â€œGorgeous,” she muttered. “Like a mad dog.”
    The word mad triggered another train of thought. Perhaps Sheriff Galton thought she was seriously crazy? Not just neurotic, but psychotic?
    The anger she felt at the possibility was another confirmation, to Catherine’s mind, of her own arrogance. She rinsed out her mouth with unnecessary force.
    Of course, she brooded, she had reacted drastically to her parents’ deaths. Who wouldn’t? Especially when that loss was simultaneously double, untimely, and violent. A period of grief; natural, expected.
    But people had begun to wonder—she had seen it in their faces, in their careful selection of topics—when the way she lived, holed up in her family home, became permanent. No invitations in, no invitations out. And by the time she realized how she had isolated herself, she had gotten used to it.
    I’ve been working on it, she thought defensively.
    The terrible jolts of the day before had shown her how far she had come and how far she had to go.
    Like an arrogant fool, I didn’t think anyone else would ever hold it to my discredit, she told her reflection silently (she was by now putting on her makeup).
    Catherine glared at the mirror and made a horrendous crazy face at herself.
    But Randall likes me, she reminded herself.
    She picked delicately at the edges of that undeniable fact, half frightened. She mulled over the unexpected feeling that had passed between them.
    Then she scolded herself, You’re mooning like a fifteen-year-old. And she smoothed her face out and gave the mirror her best, her Number One, smile. It had been a long time since she had used it; it made her cheeks ache.
    Instead of donning a long-ago boyfriend’s football jersey, which lay at the top of the pile, she rooted deep in a drawer and pulled out something that fit quite a bit better.
    The bells of the Baptist church were pealing for the eleven-o’clock service as she put in her earrings.
    The church bell chimed in with the doorbell. Catherine opened the front door uncertainly, half doubtful she had heard it.
    She had tentatively