Read Designed to Death (A Faith Hunter Scrap This Mystery) for Free Online Page B

wonderful pictures. She said those layouts were yours, there’s nothing she can do about it.”
    “Watch me.” Darlene crossed her arms over her chest.
    FOUR

    The cell phone squawked from the bedside table. I rolled over, tugging the extra-plump pillow over my ears. After the horrible morning and afternoon, I called it an early night. Now someone wanted to ruin my sleep.
    “Answer me. Answer me.” Its mechanical voice screeched.
    I had gotten rid of the landline to cut down my expenses, but now wished I had kept it. My mind was conditioned to respond to the classic ring of a phone but had the ability to shut out other ringtones, unless they were highly annoying. The problem with highly annoying was the mood I found myself shoved into. Like now. I wanted to flush the thing down the toilet or throw it through the window. Thankfully, the costs of the repairs stopped me from acting on impulse.
    The electronic parrot voice repeated the phrase. “Answer me. Answer me.”
    Resigning myself to fate, I pushed the pillow from my head and groped around until the offending device was in my hand. The need to silence the grating voice was more dire than going back to sleep...the reason I picked the ringtone.
    “What?” I said, blinking at the clock a few times before it came into focus, eleven at night.
    “I’m taking that means you haven’t seen the message boards.” Sierra’s aggravated tone cut through the haze of lingering sleep. “Good thing your grandmothers put you in charge of monitoring it.”
    Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. I wanted to slap the be-nice-voice in my head silly. The disharmony between Sierra and I was lasting much longer than I, my grandmothers, and Steve predicted. We were now going on over six months and the iciness Sierra directed at me was colder than the early winter we were experiencing. I kind of had it coming. I did think she was related to a murderer. But everyone made mistakes now and then. Hopefully with Christmas around the corner, Sierra would allow the spirit of the season to fill her heart with some forgiveness for me.
    Of course, I could help it along with volunteering to babysit the Hooligans, Harold, Henry and Howard, while she went Christmas shopping for her sons. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to be forgiven that badly. And there was the little, tiny fact that I wasn’t the one in the wrong.
    Or not totally in the wrong.
    “Imagine that. You have nothing to say.”
    I had plenty to say but most of it was better left unsaid. Forgiveness was something I was to give, regardless, even when it was hard. Like now. I leaned my head against the wood headboard and silently forgave Sierra’s attitude. “I don’t search the web when I’m asleep. Sorry my sleep schedule doesn’t match yours.”
    “What an exciting single life you lead. In bed by eleven.”
    “It’s my life. I like it.” I ignored the twinge in my heart.
    Okay, not like but accept. I had made choices in the past requiring my quieter lifestyle if I wanted the past to remain deep in my background. I had at one time behaved as a young woman with “no cares in the world and no one to answer to” and it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I ignored and mocked my upbringing and reaped some huge soul-battering consequences for pretending I was someone else.
    “I was browsing some of the scrapbook message board sites and found—”
    I took the abrupt end of the sentence as my cue to fill in the last part. “That most people on those boards talk about scrapbooking but don’t actively do it. Shopping carts must always be placed into the corral or else you are the worst type of human being. Shopping on Black Friday, or on Thanksgiving, is proof you hate people and are consumed with greed?”
    “Aren’t you amusing today?”
    “I was today, but tonight I’m irritable.” I didn’t handle being woken up well. A truth my grandmothers could attest to. While I had no trouble getting up on time when I was in the Army, I didn’t