Citizen Insane (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #2) by Karen Cantwell

the moment.”
    “I won’t go if you don’t come with me.”
    “Fine. You drive.”
    “I’ll be right over.”
    I checked on the girls and taped a note to my bedroom door just in case any of them woke up while I was gone and came looking for me. I put on my jacket and tapped the pocket to make sure my cell phone was there. Check. Finally, I slipped on a pair of clogs, picked up my keys and exited the house as quietly as possible, locking the door behind me.
    The air had grown chilly and I shivered as I crawled into my car. After a minute of fiddling to get the key into the ignition, I turned the engine over, shattering the dark silence of the night with its oil-deprived roar.
    A knock on the passenger’s window startled me until I realized it was Roz. She opened the door and slipped in. “Thought I’d save you the long drive to my house,” she said smiling.
    “I’m glad you’re so chipper at this late hour.”
    Determined to make this strange call of the wild short and sweet, I threw the gear shift into reverse, backed out and sped toward the stop sign at the end of White Willow Circle.
    Roz white-knuckled her armrest. “It’s a mini-van, Barb. Not a Ferrari.”
    “Sorry.” I looked both ways for a safe turn onto Tall Birch Avenue. “I just want to get this over with.”
    “Be careful. We’ve got all night.”
    One of my biggest gripes about Rustic Woods was the No Street Lights rule. Supposedly the issue was “light pollution.” I grumbled often and made several complaints to the homeowners association, as did other residents, to no avail. My headlights barely made a dent in the dense blackness of the moonless night. However, it was late, and there wasn’t another set of headlights anywhere around, so I turned left. We’d be at Bunny’s in less than a minute.
    I couldn’t get Bunny’s odd behavior out of my mind and was about to ask Roz what she thought, when she shouted. “Barb, watch out!”
    I hit the brakes, but not before I heard the thump.
    My neck ached from stopping so fast. “What happened?”
    “You hit something.”
    “What?”
    “I don’t know. It’s too dark. I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A deer maybe?”
    “I never saw a deer.”
    “Well you hit something!”
    “Okay, okay. Calm down. I’ll get out and check.” Shifting back to park and leaving the engine idling, I opened my door. My feet landed on the street rather than a dead animal, so things were looking up. I ran my fingers along the front side of my van—no dents. Another good sign. No front bumper damage either as far as I could tell and nothing on the ground in front. Maybe Roz was wrong. Maybe I hadn’t hit anything. I continued along the front bumper when it became very obvious that Roz was right. Well, she was sort of right. I hadn’t hit something.
    I had hit someone.
    Michelle Alexander.
     

Chapter Six
     

     
    ROZ OPENED THE DOOR WHEN I started shrieking.
    “No!” I yelled. “You’ll step on her! Crawl through the driver’s side.”
    She scrambled across while I knelt by Michelle’s body. The beams from my headlights didn’t offer a ton of visibility since she was sprawled on the ground beside my van rather than in front of it, but there was enough light to see the face of my victim. My mind swirled at the possibility that I had just killed someone. Barbara Marr: Mother Killer. My unflattering mug shot would be plastered across every newscast and newspaper in the DC Metro area. People would point at the picture and ask, “Is that Charles Manson?” “No,” others would respond. “That’s The Mother Killer—Barbara Marr. Hope she fries.” My daughters would have to hang their heads in shame in school while I sat in a cold jail cell and learned to play the harmonica.
    Of course, I would only be a murderer if she was actually dead. Jumping to conclusions of her demise wasn’t fair to anyone. Taking precious seconds to calm my erratic respiration and faster-than-the