Nursing a Grudge is Murder (A Maternal Instincts Mystery) by Diana Orgain Page B

my lungs.
    She was quiet for a moment.
    “Jill?”
    “I’m here,” she said her voice filled with sadness. “It’s that…it’s just that it sucks, Kate. You know? Professionally, things are really jiving. Really couldn’t be better. And then personally…”
    “I’m so sorry,” I said.
    There was silence on the line and I let it be. I dug my toe into the earth. The trail was hard and compact, like rock instead of dirt.
    The sound of a sniffle came across the line.
    “I’m going to go lie down. Will you call me when you get home, so I know that you’re safe?”
    I agreed and we hung up.
    I pulled water out of my pack and, after hydrating, continued up the hill.
    Two hikers, a man and a woman, were on their way down. They smiled at me as they passed and I overheard them chatting about the views.
    I soon reached Painted Rock. There was an official San Francisco Park and Recreation warning sign. It was dark wood with bright orange lettering that read, “People have fallen to their death from this point. Keep out.”
    It seemed pretty clear. There was a trail but the warning sign was directly in its path. You couldn’t
not
see the warning sign. Perry would have had to have leaned into the shrubs to avoid it, so he had to have seen it. Why had he gone down the path?
    I glanced at the dirt around the base of the sign and noticed that it seemed soft. How was that, if the trail dirt was rock hard? I pressed a finger against the sign and it wobbled back.
    Could it have fallen? Perhaps Perry hadn’t seen it? I took a step backward and studied the fork on the trail. One path led uphill, where the two hikers who’d passed me had come from. The other path was short and looked like it went right off the cliff.
    Dare I take a peek at the edge?
    As I mulled over my options I noticed the earth was dark in two small circles at the base of the uphill trail. I stuck my sneaker into one circle. The dirt was soft, almost like mud, and it stuck to my shoe. I crouched and fingered the circle. It was a hole with fresh dirt in it. The soil around it was as rock hard as the rest of the trail.
    I crudely measured the distance between the two circles with my sneakers. Two full feet and a half, the second hole reached my instep.
    I moved to the warning sign and measured the distance between the two posts. The same.
    Could someone have moved the sign?
    If so, the sign would have blocked the uphill path and left the path that literally went off the cliff unblocked.
    Why was there a path that went off a cliff? What kind of sense did that make? Surely, someone could sue over this.
    I thought of Gary Barramendi, a high-powered attorney I’d had the privilege of working with. Maybe he could help Jill.
    Actually, since Barramendi specialized in criminal defense, he probably wouldn’t be keen about a wrongful death case. I decided to let the idea go and focused instead on the sign.
    Could I dust it for prints? I’d need to receive my dust kit first. Not to mention, get training on how to use it! I’d have to ask Galigani.
    I took several pictures of the warning sign and saved them. I grimaced as I declined the automatic message to post the pics to Facebook.
    How awful would that be?

Chapter Seven
    When I reached my car at the bottom of the trail, I called Galigani and got his voicemail. I left him a quick message telling him the warning sign to the trail had been moved and asking him if we could fingerprint wood.
    My stomach growled. I glanced at my watch. It was only 10am, nowhere close to lunchtime. Still, cold toast wasn’t a substantial enough breakfast for a mother who was breastfeeding, and I was starving. I needed a
real
breakfast and the fact that
Philosophie
was across the street was too much to pass up. I had to go investigate.
    Digging inside my diaper bag/purse I rooted past an old ball cap and found my notebook. The thought of the waitress who snapped my photo nagged at the back of my mind.
    What if she’d circulated my