The Ice Maiden by Edna Buchanan Read Free Book Online Page B

late. I was trapped. Gretchen had seen me.
    â€œWait,” she said. “We’ll want two people on this.”
    â€œI can handle it.” Fidgeting like a racehorse at the starting gate, I willed the elevator doors to open. They didn’t.
    â€œNo. Too many angles here for one reporter.” She positioned herself between me and the elevator, her gleaming blood-red fingernails resting lightly on her crossed arms, her stance confrontational. “Take Ryan,” she said, cocking her head in her detestably perky way.
    â€œI don’t need help, Gretchen. It’s a long drive. I need to get down there ASAP.”
    Ryan Battle works general assignment and is my friend, but I didn’t want help.
    â€œYou two can go together.” Gretchen’s take-charge attitude would impress anyone who didn’t know she was clueless, mean-spirited, and homicidally ambitious.
    She hailed Ryan, as though he were a cab, from across the huge newsroom. He sprang from his desk at her summons, eager to please, soft brown eyes alight. I sighed and tried to zone Gretchen out, focusing on her chunky gold earrings, winking cheerily beneath the newsroom’s fluorescent lights. I always lose mine when using telephones somewhere on deadline. I save the singles, in the futile hope of one day finding theirmissing mates, or a deserving one-eared person, or that I will someday take up crafts and convert them to meaningful pieces of art in my spare time. But like me, I thought glumly, they will probably remain single, without a mate. Forever. Perhaps I could pierce my belly button and wear the orphans like ornaments, I thought, dangling from my navel.
    Ryan is a gentle soul, sweet, handsome, and impossible to resent. But I tried my damnedest. I hate too many reporters on a story.
    We descended to the lobby in silence.
    The white-hot light was blinding and the heat took my breath away as I charged out onto the pavement, three strides ahead of him.
    â€œLet’s take my car,” Ryan offered.
    What did he mean by that? Was he referring to past events, the times my cars and Lottie’s were totaled?
    â€œIt was never our fault,” I said, with a sharp look.
    â€œWhat?” He blinked, as though puzzled. “My car’s in the west lot.”
    â€œYou must be joking,” I said. “You almost got us killed last time.” The jagged scar across his forehead was barely noticeable now.
    â€œBut that was a riot,” he protested. “A brick through the windshield. But if you want to drive, Britt, that’s okay. I’ll ride shotgun.”
    He held on without comment as I blew an amber light to escape a stampede of aggressive window washers at the Dolphin Expressway ramp, where the winos were in bloom and the bums in season. We hurtled west, then south to the Don Shula. Local street names leave no doubt as to what takes priority in Miami.
    Traffic resembled a presidential motorcade, with flags mounted on nearly every vehicle.
    â€œMakes you feel good to see that, doesn’t it?” Ryan said.
    â€œSure,” I said. “if you think it makes sense to fly American flags from huge gas-guzzling SUVs.”
    I thought of the two-year-old girl whose mother had decided to surprise her husband with a shortcake dessert that night. Their toddler stumbled into an uncapped well in a strawberry field and suffocated before rescuers reached her.
    After that tragedy, the county ordered that wells in fields open to the public be capped and marked with red flags.
    They must have missed one.
    After farmers’ commercial harvests, entrepreneurs lease farm fields and open them to the public. Families on outings or tight budgets pay to pick their own produce.
    â€œIt must be fun,” Ryan was saying dreamily. “I’ve always wanted to go down there and spend a day picking fruits and vegetables. You can really experience what it’s like to be a migrant worker. Like Cesar