Who Let That Killer In The House? by Patricia Sprinkle Read Free Book Online Page B

we’d never felt a need to put a rug over the uneven old floor-boards or plaster over the beaded board walls. It was real homey anytime and particularly cozy that afternoon.
    Bo squawked his disagreement as wind whipped the crepe myrtles beside our parking lot into a crazy dance. When we heard a crash that probably meant another brittle pine had gone to meet its Maker, he flew to my shoulder and hung on tight. Fire engines wailed in the distance. I hoped nobody’s house had been hit.
    Then our lights went out. I heard a yelp of dismay from the windowless storeroom next door and Bo squawked, “Back off! Give me space!”
    “It’s just Bethany,” I told him. She was working for us full-time that summer and taking inventory in our storeroom that afternoon. I didn’t want her breaking her neck, so I lit my lamp and went out like Florence Nightingale to rescue her.
    The rest of the staff bumbled toward the light like moths, so I took them all back to my office and brought out a tin of cookies from my bottom drawer. Somebody went for Cokes from the machine, and we had a party. We couldn’t talk much, though, the rain was so loud. Bo subsided to a series of low mutters on top of my desk.
    We all jumped when my phone rang. “Little Bit?” Joe Riddley’s voice was accompanied by crackles and spits from the storm.
    I paused for a bright flash of lightning and kettledrums of thunder, then demanded, “Are you sure it’s safe to be calling right now? I don’t want us to end our lives at opposite ends of a telephone wire.”
    “I’m not going to talk long. Lightning took out a transformer, and they won’t get it fixed for hours. Go on and send folks home. You go, too.”
    “How’s the sod?”
    “Sodden. Be careful driving, now. I’ll see you at the house. And leave Bo—I’ll swing by and get him when the rain stops. You know he hates to get wet.”
    Who doesn’t? As the staff gathered up the umbrellas they’d all thought to bring, I remembered mine was in the backseat of my car. “Grab a big plastic garbage bag for each of us,” I ordered Bethany, “and I’ll run you home.”
    We cut holes for our faces and dashed through the downpour at such a pace, I collapsed into my car panting. We sat there dripping all over my upholstery like drowned possums while rain drummed on the roof and the sky flashed bright, dark, bright, dark.
    Bethany looked worried. “Could we swing by the pool to see if Hollis is there? She bikes to work, and she’ll get soaked riding home.”
    “She’s a lifeguard,” I pointed out. “She doesn’t mind getting wet, and she’s got a mother and an uncle to pick her up.” However, since I’m her grandmother and not her mother, I added, “We can swing by, if it will make you feel better.”
    It took a while. A big pine was down in the road, so we had to make a several-block detour. When we arrived, the pool and its building were dark and empty. I edged away from the curb. “I’m sure they closed before the lightning even got close. Hollis is probably a lot drier than you are right now.”
    “Could we drive by her house? She’s real scared of lightning.” Bethany spoke through chattering teeth.
    “I can’t imagine Hollis being scared of anything, and she’s got Garnet and her mother home by now. Besides, you’re soaked.”
    “But—” She must have realized she’d gotten to the edge of her grandmother’s indulgence, because she subsided. “Okay.” She fiddled with her stringy wet ponytail. “I’ll call her later. After Todd calls.”
    “Who’s Todd?” I asked in my “grandmother-doesn’t-know-anything” voice.
    She turned so pink the car temperature went up five degrees. “Oh, just a boy I’ve been seeing. A man, actually. He was at the game Saturday—a real cute blond man?”
    She was obviously waiting for me to say I’d seen him, so I did. And since Martha and Ridd had tried talking sense into Bethany without results, I decided to try another tack. “Pop and