Midsummer Murder by Shelley Freydont Page A

Grappel stood with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops. His shoulders and arms were brawny to an extreme, but his pants were belted low, and the buttons of his shirt stretched against the button holes.
    When muscle men turn to fat, thought Lindy with an internal shudder. Ugh.
    37

    Shelley Freydont
    “You were looking for me . . . Sheriff?” Only the slightest pause before the title betrayed Jeremy’s contempt. There was not a hint of it in his voice, but the sheriff’s jaw tightened.
    Lindy tried to imagine what Chi-Chi could ever have seen in this man. Or maybe, it had never been something she thought about; it was just expected that she would marry him, and so she would have if Robert hadn’t come along.
    Ugh, she thought again and turned back to watch the class. The students were now lined up in the far corner, ready to begin moving across the floor. Rebo was demonstrating the steps, but most eyes were focused not on him but toward the entrance where Byron Grappel stood contemplating Rebo.
    Grappel shook his head slowly, his mouth tight with disgust.
    Jeremy turned back to the room following his gaze. Lindy was afraid to look at him. The emotion between the two men thickened the air.
    “Initial postmortem report’s in,” said Grappel over their shoulders.
    His voice was low and hardly above a whisper.
    Jeremy twitched slightly but didn’t turn around.
    “He didn’t die immediately.” There was a pause. The coffee and orange slices began to burn Lindy’s stomach.
    “Looks like he tried to crawl back up the side of the cliff.”
    Another pause, while Lindy listened to the sound of his breathing.
    The sheriff snorted. “Don’t know why he bothered. He musta taken a flying leap to get to the bottom in the first place. Too many ledges and things to break his fall, if he had just slipped down.”
    She felt Jeremy sway.
    “Pretty nasty way to die.” The sheriff unsnapped his holster and resnapped it. “ ’Course, he might have had help.”
    Jeremy swung around. “Why don’t you say it all at once, Byron?”
    Dancers moved across the floor, diagonally from corner to corner.
    Lindy forced herself to watch their movements. Triplet, step and spiral, step to the side, run, run, jeté . She willed herself not to turn around. There was silence behind her. A standoff between Jeremy and the sheriff.
    Rebo seemed to sense that he was losing the class’s attention. His voice rose, booming over the music. “Push from the back leg, when you jeté. Come on.”
    He followed each dancer across the floor, correcting, cajoling.
    “Move. That’s really nellie, you can cover more space than that.”
    38

    Midsummer Murder
    Lindy heard Grappel snort again. “He had sex before he died.”
    This time Lindy did turn around. She stared at the man, thinking how satisfying it would be to smack the nasty expression off his face.
    “That kind of sex.” Grappel nodded toward Rebo who had just lifted a boy under the shoulder propelling him another foot in the air.
    “That’s better,” yelled Rebo. “Now do it yourself.” The boy jumped higher on the next attempt.
    “Too bad Larry Cleveland didn’t stick to doing it himself,” said the sheriff with a shrug.
    “For Christ sakes, Byron, the boy was seventeen.”
    “Not a consenting adult.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It means that I’m going to be taking a good look at his death.
    Maybe it wasn’t an accident after all.” His lips moved like he was chewing something unpleasant. “A boy that age in a place like this. It isn’t natural.” Byron lifted one eyebrow, looked again across the room and turned his back on them.
    “And you were buggering farm animals when you were twelve.” Jeremy said the words under his breath, but Lindy saw the minute hesitation in Grappel’s step before he continued toward the door.
    What a stupid thing for Jeremy to have said. Lindy waited until the door slammed behind the sheriff, then turned to him. She started to