Read Bluegrass Peril for Free Online

shoved it in his jeans pocket. He glanced at the trooper. “So you go to church with Becky and her husband?”
    Whitley shook his head. “Just Becky. Her husband took off when her twins were babies, I guess. She was already divorced when I met her a year ago.”
    Divorced. So she wasn’t happily married after all. But she had kids. “Twins?”
    Whitley laughed. “Five-year-old boys, and they keep her hopping. You never met a rowdier pair.”
    Well, that settled that. Divorced or not, Becky Dennison just dropped off his radar screen. He had no desire to get involved with the single mother of two lively mischief makers.

FIVE
    “H i, Daddy,” Becky said into the phone later that night.
    “Hey, sweetheart, how’s my best girl?”
    She smiled at his light tone. He always sounded happy to hear from her. “I’m all right.”
    “Just all right?” Now he sounded concerned. “Is something wrong with the boys?”
    “No, they’re fine. I just put them to bed.” She propped her slippered feet on the coffee table, something she insisted Jamie and Tyler never do. But the recliner had a Hot Wheels car stuck in the mechanism, and she hadn’t found the time to pry it out yet.
    “Out with it, then. What’s bothering you?”
    “Something terrible happened at work. My boss was killed, probably murdered, and I found his body this morning.”
    “Becky!” Alarm exploded in his voice. “Are you okay? Do I need to come out there?”
    A tender smile curved her lips. Always her stalwart, if long-distance, protector, especially in the four years since Mom died. “I’m fine, Daddy, and of course you don’t need to come. I just need your advice about the boys. They knew Neal, so I have to tell them something, but I’m not sure how to go about it. Do you think they’re too young to go to a funeral?”
    “Yes, I do.” Not a hint of doubt in his voice. “But they’re not too young to talk about death.”
    “You don’t think it will affect them?”
    “Sure, it will affect them. But maybe not as much as you think. They probably already know more about death than you realize. They’ve seen dead bugs and animals on the side of the road. And on television, no doubt.”
    He was right about that. She tried to monitor their television viewing, but even the cartoons were full of violence these days.
    “I wouldn’t tell them the man was murdered,” Daddy advised. “Just say he died, and he’s living in heaven now with Jesus.”
    Sadness gripped Becky as she realized that probably wasn’t true. “I don’t think Neal was a Christian. Any time I tried to discuss God or church he changed the subject.”
    “Well, then just tell the boys he died and leave it at that.”
    “Okay.” She reached for her mug of herbal tea and inhaled the soothing odor of chamomile before she took a sip. “How are you doing? Everything go all right in that meeting you were worried about?”
    Daddy worked for a software firm in Silicon Valley managing a staff of developers. She had only a vague idea of what they did. Sometimes when he described the details of his job she felt as if he was speaking another language.
    “Smooth as silk. I talked them out of a big chunk of next year’s budget to fund a new database platform in conjunction with the operating system switchover.”
    Like that. But she knew better than to ask him to explain what a database platform was and why it would cost a chunk of money. She’d be on the phone all night. “Good for you.”
    “Listen, are you sure you’re okay? If this guy was murdered, are you in any danger?”
    That thought had plagued Becky throughout the day. “I don’t think so. It looked like there was a fight. Scott thinks maybe he surprised a burglar in the barn.”
    “The barn? What would a thief want from a barn? And who is Scott?”
    “Scott is my new boss.” Unease trickled into Becky’s thoughts, but she made sure it didn’t seep into her voice. “And I don’t know what a thief would want.