Read Crazy Like a Fox (Lil & Boris #3) (Lil & Boris Mysteries) for Free Online

nativity in their yard. And the Rivers family had been given a friendly reminder to please take the nativity scene down before Easter this year. Phil and Iris Murray, a retired couple on Sixth, had been visited after neighbors called in a screaming match over what Phil said about Iris’s sister, apparently involving said sister’s predilection for much younger men.
    In other words, business as usual.
    Sometime after my pizza had been devoured, with Boris’s help, my doorbell rang. That was new, too. I grumbled as I hefted Boris onto the floor and opened my door to find Harry Rucker there. I blinked. I’d never known county prosecutors made house calls.
    “Lil!” he chirped, and ushered himself in. Trim, on the short side, like a better-groomed modern Mark Twain, he smiled at me with a glint in his eye like a hound off its leash. “How is our heroic sheriff?”
    I should mention Harry’s got a mouth full of razors as sharp as his wits. I winced. “Heroic isn’t the word I’d use.”
    He dropped easily into my only armchair, took out a cigar, and gestured extravagantly with it. “Oh, but you are the hero of the hour, my dear Lillian.”
    Lil is short for Littlepage, and when you’re nearly six feet tall, it’s a bad joke to boot, but I still prefer it to Harry’s flowery and ever-changing variations on it. “How so?” I asked.
    Boris sniffed at Harry’s feet and sneezed, then began a rude investigation of Harry’s pockets, probably hoping for tuna treats. Harry patted his head. “Why, you survived kidnap! Frostbite! Probable death from possible starvation!”
    “It was hypothermia, I had another good week left before I died of starvation, and there’s nothing heroic about getting thrown in a car trunk.”
    At that point, my mouth and my brain finally, fully reconnected.
    Harry chewed the end of his cigar contentedly. “I see Tom and Punk have not yet taken your formal statement.”
    I ignored him. I’d been thrown in a car trunk . But I’d been abducted in a truck. Hadn’t I?
    “Son of a bitch,” I snapped. “Did anyone measure the tracks? Check wheelbase and width, any of that? Try to get tread marks?”
    Chuckling, Harry held up a placating hand. “My dear sheriff, your deputies did you proud. Should the offending pickup ever appear, you will be able to confirm you were hauled from your home in a Ford F-150 XLT with new tires, no less, which left lovely marks in the snow when they ran over your petunia patch.”
    “It’s periwinkle,” I said absently. “So they changed vehicles.”
    “Quite,” said Harry, and contentedly munched a leftover crust of pizza. Boris leapt onto my lap and curled up with a sulky glare.
    Changing vehicles was smart. And there’d have been a hundred places to do it without witnesses. I could think of three within a mile of town. Assuming the truck was McElroy’s, and that Kurt was right about the guy, that and the careful obscuring of their identities was an awful lot of smart for two men dumb enough to go after a cop.
    “And of course there’s no trace yet of them or the ransom.”
    I sat up so quickly that Boris became briefly airborne. He landed on the coffee table, scrabbled for purchase, and ended up in the pizza box. He hissed, tail lashing, and vanished to his cat condo to sulk. I barely noticed.
    “ What ransom ?!”
    I’d taken Harry off-guard. He blinked, good humor fading. “You didn’t know?”
    I normally would have been pacing, but my feet still ached. I settled for a vicious glare. “I’ve been a little out of touch, Harry. Tell me what the hell I missed.”
    Before he could protest, I’d gotten a notebook and pen from the kitchen, and brought him a large glass of water. Resigned, Harry told me what he knew.
    ***^***
    He’d been relaxing, which for Harry involved tying intricate flies. People widely suspected that Harry did not actually fish. He simply used fishing as an excuse for tying flies. For Harry, this involved jewelry-making tools,