Third Degree by Maggie Barbieri Page A

suddenly and of seemingly natural causes. Everybody around me lately seemed to die a violent, untimely death. What was I supposed to do? Assume that he was murdered by George Miller? From a punch to the head? Or was I supposed to sit around and wonder who had the means and motive to create a car bomb and attach it to his engine? Not much of a mystery concerning the punch to the head; the ME would be all over that in a matter of days if that was the case. The car bomb, however, was definitely a more interesting twist in the case.
    Elaine raised an eyebrow. “I just think it’s weird,” she said cryptically. I decided that Elaine was the sister that they kept locked in the attic; all that time alone had given her a flair for the dramatic. She had probably been constructing this mystery in her head for years after reading the Nancy Drew book The Secret of the Old Clock.
    “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” I said, “but I just came to say I was sorry.” She pulled at a loose thread hanging from the waistband of her sweat suit and I got nervous. What if she unraveled the thread and her pants fell down? I was getting out of there as quickly as I could. “I’m sorry,” I repeated for what seemed like the hundredth time. “I just wanted to say that.”
    But as I walked down the street, I admitted to myself that I hadn’t been there to say I was sorry. I had been there to nose around. Nobody just drops dead for no good reason in a coffee shop. At least I didn’t think so. George Miller, in my opinion, would have to have fists of steel to have killed Carter with one blow. But now, having met the grieving woman in person, I realized that going there was just a horrible, selfish thing to do. I got into my car, gave the news van the finger, and drove back to my house.

Six
    I was in a black mood by the time I got home, still in a tizzy about what I had witnessed the day before, and angry at myself for going to the Wilmotts’. I was even angrier at myself for buying into Elaine’s conspiracy theory, whatever that was. He was a healthy guy. So what? That wasn’t a guarantee that his heart would suddenly stop working, or his aorta would explode after the fight he had had with the DPW guy, or that a vein in his head would begin to bleed and would kill him almost instantly. But I couldn’t stop thinking about her beady eyes and the thread on her sweatpants and her insistence that Carter had been healthy. And about the fact that Carter would have been blown to smithereens had he not died in front of the muffin case of Beans, Beans. He was a healthy guy with a car about to blow up, and a lot of enemies, I suspected.
    Although I had locked the house up before I left, Max and Fred were sitting inside, at the kitchen table, Trixie by Fred’s side. Max gave me a cheery “Hello!” while Fred just grunted. That was the best I was going to get.
    The torn screen over my sink indicated Max’s point of entry. She saw me looking at it and offered a weak, “Sorry.” Max has a history of jumping in and out of windows; she’s a regular break-in artist. Given that she’s petite and wiry and has some experience at it, she’d be a perfect second-story man. Fred didn’t look contrite at all considering I knew that he had hoisted her up to the window, in, and over the sink right below it.
    I pointed at the screen. “You’re paying for that.” I went to the refrigerator, opened it, and peered inside. Unless I wanted a caper, pickle, and mayonnaise sandwich on stale bread, there was nothing to eat. I looked at the clock; it was twelve-thirty. I had a little breathing room before Crawford appeared. “And you’re getting it fixed today, so I hope you can find a hardware store that’s open.”
    “Where were you?” Max asked. “And have you been crying?”
    I closed the refrigerator with a loud thud; I wasn’t in the mood to explain. “What do you guys want to eat?” I asked. I pointed at the screen again but was at a