The Search The Secrets of Crittenden Cou - By Shelley Shepard Gray Page 0,5

water than I can provide, you should have never left Frannie’s bed-and-breakfast.”

“Mose, you need to take care of the basics,” Luke said as he picked up his fork and took another bite of the roasted chicken on his plate. “You know . . . all you have to do is pay your bills. Electricity. Gas.”

“Those are taken care of. And that old water heater worked just fine for one person.” The look he sent Luke was priceless. It told, without a doubt, that he thought Luke was complaining far too much. “Settle down, eat, and then we’ll go back to my place.”

“Settle down?”

Mose lifted his chin. “Again, if you don’t want my company, you should go back to Frannie’s.”

“You know I can’t stay there any longer. She was one of the last people to see Perry alive. Because of that, she’s a suspect, or at least a person of interest.”

Mose rolled his eyes. “Miss Frannie’s as much a suspect in Perry Borntrager’s murder as you are.”

“I’d say she’s got more of a motive than I do, Mose. She was seeing him when he died.”

“That don’t mean much. Frannie sees just about everybody. That’s her way.” Primly folding his hands on the table between them, Mose added, “She’s an innkeeper, you know.”

“You, Mose, are a piece of work.” Luke was sure he was going to strangle his old friend before he ever got out of Crittenden County.

Mose chuckled as he dug back into his own plate of food. As the minutes passed and their stomachs grew full, the investigation surfaced again.

“You should forget about Frannie Eicher.”

“I can’t, and you know that. She and Perry were courting.” Luke put emphasis on courting, pushing away the thought that the antiquated word now seemed to be a viable part of his vocabulary.

“Courting don’t mean everything you seem to think it does, English.”

Luke bit back a caustic comment, afraid that with the way he was feeling about his friend he was going to make things worse between them. Already their friendship was becoming strained as he remained in Crittenden County much longer than planned. Plus now he was staying with Mose in his already cramped quarters.

He’d arrived in Marion a little over two weeks ago, intending to put his skills as a detective with the Cincinnati Police Department to good use while he recuperated from a bullet wound. His friend Mose had asked him to help uncover the secrets that surrounded the death of Perry Borntrager. Mose had felt he was too close to the community to get many honest answers, and adding to that was his inexperience dealing with homicides.

Luke, full of pride with his experience in Cincinnati, imagined the whole investigation would only take a few days at the most.

He’d been wrong.

It seemed there were more secrets about Perry than lightning bugs at night. The case was proving to be both frustrating and curiously humbling.

Until he’d found a pair of sunglasses at the crime scene. He shook his head, remembering that moment.

He’d returned to the Millers’ land again, hoping that another walk in the field where Perry’s body was found would reveal a new clue or, at the very least, clear his mind. The ground was dry for once, and as Luke crunched through the grass, a swarm of cicadas began to cry, their shrill humming piercing the air, growing in volume until a man could hardly think about anything else.

He walked on, finally taking a seat where Abby Anderson had said she’d smoked a cigarette and tried to fit in with the wrong crowd.

Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine what the scene had been like, back when someone had taken a young man’s life, carted him across this field, and dumped him in a well.

He tried to imagine what the guys who’d done it had been thinking. Were they angry?

Just doing a job?

Looking off into the distance, he mentally traced a path from the woods, to the area where Mose had decided they’d carried him.

He started walking. Looking around for stones, trash, anything else that could provide enlightenment. Soon after, he tripped, wrenching his leg.

As he fell on his backside, he gasped and silently cursed, wishing his leg would finally work.

Getting up to his feet wasn’t easy. He was going to be back on crutches and icing his knee all night to help with the swelling.

Well, this was probably no less than he deserved, out here by himself. Rolling to his side, he braced himself on his hands, trying to balance