Only Flesh and Bones
Page 35
With elaborate condescension, the detective said, “And Dr. Dishey thought you should tell his friends all about it.”
“I suppose he thought it would add a little spice,” I hissed.
Angry as I was, I had hoped I’d badgered him into offering a heated rejoinder, but instead, the detective said coolly, “You could go on one of those TV shows. ‘Dead Bodies and the Women Who Love Them.’ Now, about that nice long sleep you had.”
“That what?”
“You were in the nice carnivorous dinosaur man’s house, and—”
“Fine. I slept only seven hours. I don’t sleep well in strange places, so I read for a while.”
He raised his eyebrows in happy interest. “Wonderful. What ya reading?”
“The Refiner’s Fire.”
“What?”
I heard Officer Raymond shift suddenly. I rolled my head toward him and looked at him. His lips had parted. He was surprised, and looked into my eyes for the first time, looked deep inside, as if expected to find someone he knew in there, someone who’d been missing for years. Recovering himself he looked away, spoke to the detective. “Refiner’s Fire. By John L. Brooke.”
Now it was my turn to gape. The Refiner’s Fire was a thick scholarly tome on the roots of Mormon cosmology. I had found it on the bookshelf in my room. I had selected it expressly because it had looked dry and brainy enough to put me to sleep. What was a rank-and-file cop doing reading it?
Now the detective smiled his geek smile at Officer Raymond. “One of your church books. Ah.” He turned back to me. “So you read until midnight, woke up when the phone rang at what you think was five, went back to sleep until seven. Then you took a shower and ate. What did you eat, Em?”
I took another deep breath, closed my eyes. “Burritos. From the freezer. I don’t recommend them; in fact, I’d love it if someone could rustle up a decent doughnut for me. But I ate them, and there you have it. I waited for Dr. Dishey to return. He did not. I got restless. I decided to do some sight-seeing.”
“And yet you waited until ten-thirty?”
Now I colored, a nice red blush from collarbone to scalp. If Officer Raymond knew about books on Mormon cosmology, he was sure as hell going to have an opinion about my reasons for tarrying another hour before setting out to my car. “I just waited,” I said firmly.
“You waited,” the detective said, his voice edging on accusation. “You waited.”
“That’s enough!” I said. “Are you charging me with a crime, or am I free to go?” I jerked my right hand into a fist, clanging the bracelet of the handcuff as it tightened against the frame of the gurney. “You call Carlos Ortega! You do it now!”
Interestingly, it was Officer Raymond who moved to bring things to a conclusion. He stepped halfway out into the hall and signaled to a nurse. “We done here?” he called.
The detective looked at him with an expression bordering on disgust. Then he looked back at me and grinned almost maniacally. “Don’t leave town,” he said, like he thought the line funny.
A CONVENTONAL CORPSE
A CLAIRE MALLOY MYSTERY
JOAN HESS
Farberville, Arkansas, is playing host to its first-ever mystery convention with five major mystery writers—each representing a different subgenre of the mystery world—making the trek to the local college for “Murder Comes to Campus.” Bookseller Claire Malloy is looking forward to meeting some of her favorite writers. But when one of the conference attendees dies in a car accident, it’s evident that in Farberville the murder mystery is more than a literary genre.
“Hess goes about things in a lively style. Her heroine, Claire Malloy, has a sharp eye and an irreverent way of describing what she sees.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Blends humor, eccentric characters, familiar emotions, and plot twists into an enjoyable lark.”—Nashville Banner
AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD FROM ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS
Mystery’s #1 Bestselling Author
AGATHA CHRISTIE
And Then There Were None
also published as Ten Little Indians
FIRST, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they’re unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. And only the dead are above suspicion.
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DON’T MISS THESE MYSTERIES BY
J. S. BORTHWICK
THE BRIDLED GROOM
Planning their wedding at High Hope horse farm is trouble enough for teaching fellow Sarah Deane and her fiance Dr. Alex McKenzie. Though the wedding goes off without a hitch, Sarah and Alex are reined in from their honeymoon when the stable turns up a gruesome corpse … and it doesn’t take more than horse sense to recognize foul play.
“The smashing finale of a murderer on horseback is hair-raising.”—Houston Post
MY BODY LIES OVER THE OCEAN
For English teacher-cum-amateur sleuth Sarah Deane, her investigative skills are put to the test when she finds herself sizing up a throng of eccentric passengers and quirky crew members aboard the Queen Victoria ocean liner where bodies are turning up dead left and right. Now, Sarah must decide if she’s in too deep or if she can catch a killer before it’s too late …
“Miss Borthwick has a keen eye and a sharp pen.”
—New York Times Book Review
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ONLY FLESH AND BONES
Copyright © 1998 by Sarah Andrews Brown. Excerpt from Bone Hunter © 1999 by Sarah Andrews Brown.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
eISBN 9781466819702
First eBook Edition : April 2012
St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition/July 1998
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition/August 1999