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

Mettle stood and leaned into the glass. “Don’t listen to her. She’s trying to take the fall.”

“Siddown!” the guard shouted.

But Mettle banged both fists on the glass. “I told her to do it!”

I turned to plead my case with Mettle and our eyes locked. In that brief moment, in the depth of his brown eyes, I saw us together. Working at the inn. Laughing. Cooking. Doing chores and being happy, even chasing the little children of our guests down to the dock so they didn’t fall in.

I never wanted it to end.

But then, right in front of me, Matt Mettle burst into flames.

30

My heart burst.

The blood rushed to my face and burned my cheeks.

I pushed back from the stool.

“Matt!”

All I could see was the orange ball of black and curling flames. It singed the booth and stung my skin, hotter than opening a five-hundred degree oven.

On the other side of the glass, the guards rushed toward the thrashing fire and sprayed Mettle with foam. The response was prompt. Prepared. Practiced.

The glass filled with dripping, bubbling goo, and Mettle disappeared behind the lumpy whiteness.

My eyes got heavy in their sockets, my entire face smarting and throbbing. I couldn’t swallow.

No one could survive the intensity of that heat.

Before the tears had a chance to come, the guard on my side of the glass ran to me and yanked my arms behind my back.

“Get off her!” Kendall said. “She has rights!”

The guard dragged me to the door. I was too weak to fight back.

“This is third time she’s done this,” the guard said. “She is not remotely human.”

“Unhand her immediately,” Kendall said. “And take us to the warden.”

Kendall sat first. He occupied the same chair that Mettle had occupied on our first visit with the warden.

I sat beside him, landing heavily enough to make the legs buckle. My head hurt, the pressure behind my eyes enough to make it feel as if they were bulging from their sockets.

Mayweather’s hands were folded on the glassy desk in front of him. His eyes were closed, either in silent, respectful prayer or in begging God to rid him of all his paperwork.

But I didn’t care about his troubles. All I cared about was Matt Mettle. Images of him chopping wood, of driving me mad, of making stupid jokes, all flashed before my eyes, only for each image to be consumed by an angry fireball like some cheesy Hollywood explosion. My eyes wanted to leak, but there were no tears, not yet, the pressure holding them back like a million frantic fish unable to swim through a tiny channel. I shivered with shock.

He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t be.

Mayweather finally opened his eyes. “Third time, Casket.”

The witches chanted in the back of my head.

Thrice to thine and thrice to mine

And thrice again, to make up nine.

“Why would you want Matt Mettle dead?” Mayweather demanded. “Was it because he was helping me with the case? Did you think he was hot on your trail? You realized he figured you out, didn’t he?”

“You don’t have to answer that,” Kendall said.

But I couldn’t help myself. “I would never want Matt dead. He was one of my only friends in this God-forsaken state.”

Kendall put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m your friend, Rosie.”

I brushed it off. “Mettle was a good man, Warden, a better man than—”

I stopped myself. Insulting the warden would only add fuel to the fire. So to speak.

Mayweather gritted his teeth. “I am not the enemy here.”

Kendall squeezed my shoulder. He could feel me shaking. “Rosie, calm down. Do not say anything else. Your words can be used against you.”

Mayweather cracked his knuckles. “She’ll answer my questions or I will call the cops.”

“Go ahead and call them,” Kendall said. “In fact, please do. The only one I see who’s guilty of murder right now, is the one who allows a triple homicide to occur right beneath his nose in his own institution.”

I buried my face in my hands, my cheeks raw. I rocked back and forth, mumbling to myself.

Mayweather stood up and crossed himself. “What is she doing? Is she putting a curse on me?”

“Don’t say anything,” Kendall said to me.

“How did you do it? Did you send your spirit out and bewitch him? Did you sign the Devil’s book?”

“DO NOT answer him,” Kendall said.

“Excuse me, but I am not the police,” Mayweather said. He had retreated to the cabinet against the far wall for safety. “That woman’s answers are not admissible in court. If she’s innocent of witchcraft, she can talk to me freely.”

Kendall fumed and banged the desk hard enough to make the warden’s golden pens jump. “And what happens when you’re called as a witness, but you refuse to report what she said, huh? Then what? Then you’ll be charged with obstruction, so don’t you dare tell me what she can and cannot say. She will NOT answer your questions.”

Still, I rocked back and forth, hiding behind my hair. I couldn’t stop the rocking.

“Caesar,” I mumbled.

Mayweather stepped up to the desk. “What did she say?”

I looked up, my eyes on fire. “Caesar. It was Roman Caesar.”

Kendall grabbed my shoulder and tried to shake me out of my trance. “Do not say anything else, Rosie. I’m getting you out of here.”

I kept rocking, as worthless as a broken jill-in-the-box, but Kendall pulled me to my feet and put his tailored jacket over my shoulders as if he were draping me with a shock blanket.

“We’re not done with her!” Mayweather said. “She’s in cahoots with the devil, I tell you. The devil’s whore!”

As Kendall led me down the hall toward the exit, he pulled me close to his chest and draped his expensive jacket over my head to try to shield me from the security cameras.

His jacket smelled like a cash register.

In front of my feet, the exit sign glowed bright red, the color reaching toward my ankles.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Away from here,” Kendall said. “It’s not safe. When