Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle Pauline Jones (the red fox clan txt) 📖

Seemingly oblivious to their discomfort, she sidestepped past the Nash and joined her aunts. For a long, unnerving beat, they stared into the freezer, the four heads angled the same direction for half of it, then the other direction.

“I see you found a place for the cake,” Luci said

“Well,” Miss Theo said. “He wasn’t using that spot under his knees and I only had to move him a very little to get it there.”

“It was my idea to put the point of the heart between his cheeks,” Miss Weena said with obvious pride.

Luci smiled and put her arm around her little aunt. “Sheer genius, Miss Weena.”

Mickey choked, drawing their attention to him. Miss Theo directed a sweet smiling look at Mickey. “Oh, good. You’ve come to get him out. He’s in the way.”

“Well, that tears it,” Fern said. “They’ve found whatever it was Artie wanted to move and brought in the cops. Any guess how long it will be before they find the money?”

“They didn’t go into the house,” Donald muttered. He scratched his crotch as he considered the situation. “Might still be able to pull it off.”

“Why don’t we walk past, see what they’re doing?” Fern was tired of sitting in the car. Even under the shade of the old oak and the windows down, the temperature was way past uncomfortable. She could feel Donald thinking, and the effort sent the temperature in the car up a few more degrees.

“Just wait a minute, Fern, they ain’t been gone that long.”

Fine. She’d tried to be nice. Now it was time to get nasty.

“I want to get out of this car, Donald,” Fern said with pointed calm. “I’m not as young as I used to be. And I won’t be getting any older if I don’t get some air.”

“All right, all right. You can take a stroll...but take it slow! Careful-like. Don’t want to draw no attention to us.”

Right. Like the biddies peeking out from behind their lace curtains hadn’t seen them sitting here for the last couple of hours. Donald might be cunning about killing, but he was clueless about the suburbs.

Fern opened the door and had one foot out when the water erupted in the yard next to them. Only a narrow sidewalk and low white fence separated them, so she got a face full of water. She slammed the door closed, just as Donald grabbed her arm.

“What?”

“Listen” he hissed, pulling the map into position again.

She didn’t want to listen. She wanted to get out. The water had cooled her off until it evaporated, leaving her hotter than before. And now she was shut in the hot map tent again, where even the sultry air couldn’t get at them. Then she heard it, too, and forgot about being hot. The distant sound of sirens. Lots of them. And the passing of each sweaty second brought them steadily closer.

“New Orleans has lots of crime, Donald,” Fern pointed out. “I’d be surprised if we didn’t hear sirens.”

“Getting an itch, Fern.”

Fern’s eyes widened.

“Maybe we ought to get out of here...”

“Good idea.”

Donald shoved at the map, the folds resisting as Fern fumbled for the ignition where the keys dangled.

“Take it slow!” Donald’s hand clamped over hers, his expression anxious, sweaty. “Easy. Casual-like.”

Before he finished speaking, two police cars, their lights flashing but without the warning sirens, turned the corner, coming at them from two different directions.

“Donald!”

“We’ll go down fighting, Fern!” he cried, groping for the Uzi he’d stashed under the seat, even as the map tangled around his head.

As her heart accelerated to dangerous levels for her age, weight, and physical condition, the cars bounced across the rough road surface, coming closer...closer...closer...while in the distance the wail of more sirens got steadily nearer.

“I think I’m having a heart attack, Fern,” Donald moaned, clutching his chest.

Fern’s sweat-soaked hand slipped on the keys as she tried to fire the engine. The first police car drew level...then slid past them and screeched to a halt at the foot of the driveway the Seymour woman and her escorts had disappeared into. The other car never even came close. It slid into position near the first car as its officers slid out and hurried up the drive and out of sight.

For one long, agonized moment, Donald and Fern stared at each other in bewilderment and shock.

Then Donald quavered, “Get the hell out of here, Fern! Before the rest of them get here!”

She got, the car wobbling as she headed for the corner. In the rear view mirror, she thought she saw a man sitting in the midst of the sprinklers before she turned the corner. She forgot about him or anything else until she’d put several blocks between them and the cops and that terrifying official noise...and until the air conditioning had cooled the car to a breathable level.

Donald scowled, his recovery assured with the passing of immediate danger. “What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know.” But she didn’t think they’d be going to Disneyland anytime soon.

Though thawing around the edges, the corpse was still solid. Huddled in the bottom of the freezer with a wrapped cake under his sprawled knees, his arms were at his sides and his head was back against the edge of the freezer. His skin was tinted blue and frosty from the warm air that mingled with the cold. And, Mickey was forced to concede, frozen solid, the corpse was not a credit to his sex.

The only comment Delaney made before he went to call in the crime boys was that he must have frozen before rigor set in. This thinly veiled reference to the fact that rigor can sometimes add some emphasis made Mickey choke. While waiting for the reinforcements to arrive, Mickey had ample opportunity to study the corpse and to realize what Luci meant when she said she recognized the corpse but didn’t know him.

Their John Doe had one of those faces that you feel like