A Life for a Life by Lynda McDaniel (best selling autobiographies .txt) 📖

“Well, you’ve certainly been blazing up and down the highways,” I said to Alex, as I dried my hair with a towel. I’d taken my first shower in five days and was starting to feel human again.

I’d decided to believe his story. It was too convoluted to be fabricated. Alex explained that he’d found out some details he wanted to share in person—though I think this place was growing on him—and to offer moral support after the fire. He couldn’t get out of D.C. until early afternoon, so on the way down, he stopped at the Inn at Jonas Mountain because he was starving. And about to fall asleep at the wheel. At the bar, where he’d ordered a cup of coffee while he waited for a table, Kitt Scanlon sidled up next to him. She told him she was waiting on a table, too, so why didn’t they sit together?

“Okay, sounds plausible,” I said. “And even you aren’t that good of an actor—or that much of a cad—that you could’ve put on such a show of innocence when you arrived today.” I picked up the hairdryer and turned it on. Then turned it off almost immediately. “Wait a minute,” I said. “That happened five days ago—when I went to dinner at the inn, trying to cheer myself up. Sure didn’t work out that way.”

“Well, I’m sorry about that, but I wish you’d come over and spoken to us.”

“Yeah, right. But what did you and Kitt do for the next four days?”

“I don’t know what Kitt did, because I got called back to D.C.” Something Kitt had shared triggered a new avenue to pursue, so he called his assistant, Devlin, to ask him to start researching it. But Devlin interrupted to tell Alex his best client—the publisher of a prestigious D.C.-based political magazine—had an emergency that he needed to deal with. Too important to dismiss, he said, so Alex turned around and headed back up Interstate 81 to D.C. It took him three days to resolve, after which he drove back down.

“What a mess. I can’t believe you made that drive three times in five days.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but you’ve got to admit it was worth it.”

It was. We’d put all his files in a couple of storage boxes, and as soon as I got dressed, we planned to take them to Brower’s office. While I finished up (I had some catching up to do with my personal grooming), Alex anxiously paced around the apartment.

“Let’s get going,” he said. “I want to get that sheriff off his fat ass. He won’t be able to sweep this under the rug.”

“Ah, nothing like a good cliché from a Pulitzer winner!” I shouted from the bedroom.

“Yeah, and a stitch in time, saves nine, so hurry up. I can’t wait to see Brower’s face, which by the way, is a face only a mother could love. But if he has any smarts, he’ll realize he’s going to look great, even though he can’t see the forest for the trees. Which, come to think of it, makes me madder than a wet hen.”

“Oh, stop it,” I said, laughing at his wordplay. I grabbed my purse and keys. “I don’t care who gets the credit. I just want it over.”

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I felt wiped out when we got back from Brower’s, so I lay down for a few minutes. By the time I woke up, I was starving. My appetite had come back with a vengeance. I’d promised Abit that we’d take him to dinner—just to Geri Cantwell’s (I hadn’t been back since The Day), but by the look on his face, you’d have thought it were La Taberna. He’d already eaten supper with his family, but he was happy to eat again.

It was my turn to hurry Alex along, but he insisted he needed a drink first. After making himself a gin and tonic, we sat together and talked about what we’d just done. Lonnie had made a low whistle when he read one report, and Brower bowled us both over by admitting it was good investigative work. I was glad it was out of my hands now, though I wasn’t completely out of the action. I still