Read Gone to Ground for Free Online Page B

seen him runnin down the street in bloody clothes? Surely not, or the police would be all over him by now.
    I glanced at my watch. Twenty-five minutes had passed since I left Mary Harell's color to process. Time to check on her.
    Somehow I dragged myself to my feet and put on my perky face. Took a deep breath. The day wasn't even half over, and already it seemed like a lifetime. A choice weighed on me that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I couldn't bear to give up my brother to the police. But if I didn't tell them what I'd seen—
    How many more women would die?

Chapter 7
Cherrie Mae

    After Mayor B's house I had two smaller ones to clean before I was done for the day. I dusted and swept and scrubbed on automatic, my mind goin all directions.
    What was I gon do bout what I seen?
    I slumped into my own house a little after 4:00, wishin more than ever my Ben was still with me. He'd passed from a heart attack two years ago, just one year shy a retiring from his job at the bank. But I still talked to him and felt his presence in the house. And I still read the fine literature he'd introduced me to early in our marriage. Benjamin Bane Devine may only have been a high school graduate—like me—but I'm tellin you, that man was a reader. Chekov and Tennyson, Milton and Dante filled his head and stretched his dreams. Them dreams played out in his children. Both our son and daughter graduated college, Lester in business and Donelle in communications. Now they both had good jobs and families.
    If only they hadn't moved out a state to find em.
    I kicked off my shoes and headed to the refrigerator for a glass a sweet tea. Then to my favorite chair in the livin room, worn brown with a pop-up footrest. On the nearby table sat my Kindle e-reader, the fancy present my children gave me last Christmas. I couldn't understand why I'd want such a thing until Donelle tol me I could get lots a classic books for free. Wouldn't need to run to the Bay Springs library so much. Right now in my Kindle I was re-readin Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King . I kept a little black notebook and a pen next to the Kindle so I could write down quotes I wanted to remember.
    I set down my glass and collapsed in my chair. At sixty-two, I didn't know how many more years I could clean houses. Trouble was, I needed the money, and that wasn't likely to change anytime soon. But my ankles swelled ever day. At the end a work I always put em up fast as I could.
    Gazin out my front window I could see my neighbor's house across Third Street. Esther Goins, in her seventies, used to live there by herself, another widow. Now a granddaughter and her husband had moved in. Esther was too scared to live by herself. Couldn't blame her. Our pretty little Amaryllis had turned into a war zone between regular folk and some crazy person.
    "'Behold where Ares, breathin forth the breath of strife and carnage, paces—paces on.'" I said the words aloud—words Sophocles coulda wrote bout our town today. Chill bumps popped down my arms. We didn't exactly have the Greek god a war in Amaryllis. We had a round-faced, half-baldin mayor. Wore what was left a his gray hair in what white folk call a comb-over. Not the likeliest a killers. But I seen what I seen.
    Why on earth would Mayor B kill those women?
    Did Mrs. B sleep so sound she wouldn't know if her husband slipped out at night? Or was she just not talkin?
    The phone rang, and I jumped. I lifted the receiver off the table beside me, thinkin night would fall in a few hours and fear would leak into my bones like acid. Never failed when the sun went down. Now the fear would have a face attached—Mayor B's.
    How would I ever step foot in that man's house again?
    The ID said Thomas Howzer. I hit the talk button. "Hi, Lucelia."
    "Cherrie Mae, just checkin on you. Tom and I still say you should sleep in our extra bedroom tonight. We'd feel better if you did."
    "Thanks, but I'll be all right. You know I keep that billy