Read Book Club Bloodshed for Free Online Page B

footing and went down in the grass strip along the road.
    “Get out of the way, you whale!” the guy yelled through the passenger window before speeding off. She didn’t recognize him or the car, but if she ever saw them again, she definitely would.
    Missy picked herself up. When she rubbed her sweatpants, the mud she’d accumulated smeared onto her hands. Though the guy was about to take the bend in the road ahead, she gave him the one-finger salute before he disappeared from view.
    Sometimes, she loathed men. For some reason, it was socially acceptable for them to give people a hard time about their weight. People just shrugged or laughed it off and looked the other way.
    There wasn’t much of a shoulder on this two lane road, but still, she wasn’t that big that he’d need to swerve to avoid her.
    He was just an asshole.
    And even though she told herself she shouldn’t feel bad, and repeated to herself that the guy was just one of those people who reveled in making people feel awful about their weight, she couldn’t help but feel down. The runner’s high she’d briefly experienced dissipated quickly, and once the adrenaline died she was left short of breath with tired, aching muscles. She turned around and ran back home, but her heart wasn’t really into it.
    ***
    Missy took a shower and purposely didn’t look in the full-body mirror in her bedroom. Instead she went with her standby comfy, loose jeans she always wore and an equally comfy, loose long-sleeved t-shirt under a flannel. It was a great outfit for work, she was always getting up and down and carrying things and moving around in Books and Crannies.
    Exercise always made her even hungrier than usual, so she was ravenous when she got to the kitchen. She fed Cody first, then weighed her options. They came down to: cereal, cereal, cereal. She settled on cereal.
    She ate quickly and checked the time: 8:15AM. By now, Lee Greenberg was probably in his office. But maybe she didn’t even need to call him. Missy nodded to herself. She wasn’t going to let that idiot from earlier ruin her outlook on the day. Nope. Today she was going to get her friend out of jail. And she might be able to do it without a lawyer.
    Ignoring Jill’s orders from last night, Missy scrolled through her contacts again and called Tyler’s cell phone instead of the station.
    “Hello, Melissa.”
    His tone was neutral. Missy wondered if he was home or at the station. She pictured Jill standing behind him, fuming. And it made her smile.
    “Tyler, we need to talk. Can we meet?”
    “Come to the station.”
    Missy was thinking it would be safer if they talked outside of the station. She didn’t want anybody there to overhear them, in case Trudy’s theory was right and the mysterious cop was Anne’s killer.
    “I really need to talk to you somewhere else, Tyler. I—”
    “If this is official police business, I need you to come to the station, Melissa. If it’s not, then…”
    “Then what?”
    “Then…I don’t know.”
    Missy didn’t think she’d ever heard Tyler say I don’t know before. He sounded lost.
    “I spoke to Jill last night.”
    His voice turned high-pitched. “What?”
    “Yeah, I spoke to her,” Missy said. “Guess she didn’t give you the message.”
    “What…what did she say?”
    “That I wasn’t supposed to call you on this phone anymore.” Missy chuckled. “Oops.”
    “Melissa,” he said. “Our situation is complicated. She knows a lot about you, too, so she must have felt threatened.”
    Why would she feel threatened unless Jill knew Tyler still had feelings for her? It was the only explanation. Missy was both happy and angered. She would have gladly dated Tyler again and had come close six months ago, right before he’d dropped the bomb on her about he and his ex-wife trying to work things out.
    She let her frustration and disappointment get the better of her. “That’s funny, Tyler, because I don’t know much about her.”
    “Melissa,