Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery R.M. Wild (inspirational books .txt) 📖

it so many times, I’d remember it in the grave. Archaeologists of the future would find the words carved into the dirt. Here lies Rosie Casket. Her almost-boyfriend Matt Mettle was suspended, remember?

Mettle was so distracted by losing Caesar that he drove right past my driveway. I was so distracted in almost giving myself up to him, that I didn’t notice it either, not until I saw the bright red lightning rod for the lighthouse. It took me a moment to gather my bearings.

“Ummm, hold on, Matt. I think I live back there.”

“Caesar’s a real scumbag. Can you imagine him as a minister?”

“Matt, you missed the house.”

He looked around for a moment, then slammed on the brakes. He reversed as fast as the cruiser would go, the engine whirring. At my driveway, he yanked the wheel around and swung the cruiser onto the gravel, butt-first.

I still felt strange enough about being so close to making out with him that I thought it might not hurt to spend a few more minutes together. I thought maybe we should talk about how we were feeling in that moment. I thought maybe we should be open with each other.

Besides, I didn’t want to be left alone to do any more cleaning.

I climbed out the car. “Do you want to come in for a few minutes?”

“No, I gotta take care of something,” he said coldly.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.”

Before I could protest, he leaned across the passenger seat. For a split second, I thought he was attempting to steal a goodbye kiss and I went to lean into his lips, but then he yanked the door shut in my face and peeled out the driveway.

I felt like I was standing waist-deep on the shore and a wave had come up and smacked me in the belly. How could I possibly have entertained the idea of hooking up with him? Fish and pickles? A numb butt?

What was wrong with me?

I watched the cruiser disappear behind the trees. Maybe the stress of the past few days had reached a crescendo and all I wanted was an escape, even if it meant compromising our friendship.

Maybe I needed an escape, even if the pleasure had no promises.

At least all the stress and anxiety was helping to keep the weight off. I was hungry, but didn’t bother eating, and sank into the armchair with a fat book from Phyllis’s shelf: the Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

Usually, I had to be in a particularly attentive mood to enjoy reading Shakespeare, as he was definitely not a writer one could sit down with and read for pure entertainment. My students had always asked me if people really talked like that back in Shakespeare’s time. My response was always to put it back on them.

“What’s your favorite film?”

Inevitably, they would choose some silly horror movie. For some reason, teens were infatuated with horror.

“Dead Christmas.”

“Okay, and do people these days talk like they do in Dead Christmas?”

“Yeah.”

“Do they really? Try this. The next time you’re actually having a conversation with a friend—and I mean a real conversation, not texting—try recording it. Then transcribe what you’ve recorded and compare your conversation with the conversations in Dead Christmas. If they’re anything remotely similar, I will buy you a sandwich.”

“I’d rather get bonus points.”

I sighed and kicked my feet over the arm of the chair as if I were treading water. The one thing I didn’t miss about teaching was all the grade-grubbing. What my students had often failed to realize was that a good writer made fake dialogue feel real. That’s why we could so easily imagine all those Elizabethans speaking in iambic pentameter.

I flipped through the pages to Macbeth and skimmed down to the parts with the witches. In act one, scene three, the first witch engaged in a bit of braggadocio as she described the power she wielded over the fate of a sailor:

I myself have all the other,

And the very ports they blow;

All the quarters that they know

I’ th’ shipman’s card.

I’ll drain him dry as hay.

Sleep shall neither night nor day

Hang upon his penthouse lid.

He shall live a man forbid.

Weary sev’nnights, nine times nine,

Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine.

Though his bark cannot be lost,

Yet it shall be tempest-tossed.

Look what I have.

Captain Herrick had been the one to deliver the message in the bottle, hadn’t he? Maybe instead of trying to find the bridge that the online trolls were living under, I was better off trying to track down the individual who had left me the original warning.

Maybe Herrick had something to do with it. Or like the witch’s sailor, maybe he was just a pawn in a greater scheme.

My phone buzzed.

I had tossed my handbag on the couch. I forced myself to put the book down, get out of the chair, and answer it.

The name on the screen read Ken Doll.

“Lousy Mettle,” I mumbled. He must have changed the name in my contacts when he installed that tracking app.

“Hi Kyle,” I said.

“I’ve got bad news,” he said.

I was halfway to sit down again, but froze in mid-air. “What?”

“It’s about Matt Mettle.”

“What about him? I just saw him about an hour ago.”

“He called me a few minutes ago,” Kendall said. “For representation.”

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My heart did a little guppy swim into my stomach. “Representation? Why?”

“Matt’s been arrested.”

My tongue went dry and stuck to the roof of my mouth. It tasted like I had licked sandpaper.

“What for?”

“Remember that deal I negotiated with James Herrick? Yeah, well, part of the stipulation of Mettle’s suspension was that he was not supposed to drive that cruiser around town. That’s state property. One of the cops saw him driving down the highway and pulled him over.”

“Which cop?”

“A sergeant by the name of Billy Ganz.”

“Geez,” I said. Billygoat. The same cop that Mettle had called to get Caesar’s address. The lousy bum had double-crossed him.

“It gets worse,” Kendall added. “Because Mettle’s keys had been surrendered, he drilled the ignition and used a