Read Harley Jean Davidson 03 - Evil Elvis for Free Online Page A

being unkind wasn’t her style. Not like that. Hurting others was unnecessary. Most of the time.
     
    Harley had a brief guilty pang about her caustic relationship with her cousins, but that was the way they’d always communicated. Though after risking her own life helping them out of a tight spot with a smuggler, murderer, and possible prison terms, their relationships had greatly improved in the last couple of months. It’d certainly make future family reunions more pleasant.
     
    Anyway, now that she was on the receiving end of the “take a break” letdown, it still stung, no matter how nicely it was meant. A lesson for the future. An honest “this isn’t working” was better than waiting for a phone call that would never come.
     
    Diva was right. As usual. Karma had a way of biting you in the butt just when things seemed to be best.
     
    As she was contemplating past sins and thinking about a cold Coke, a scream came from one of the other tour vans parked nearby. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she stuck her head out her still open van window to see what was going on. It was another Memphis Tour Tyme van, one of the larger ones that held two dozen people. Once it had been a Head Start school bus, but that was before the renovation of white paint and fancy blue lettering.
     
    She didn’t get out of the van because, after all, it was probably just a scream of frustration after listening to two dozen Elvises all singing at the same time. But then it came again in a shriller tone. Damn. She recognized that high pitch—Lydia Free.
     
    Sighing, she got out of her van and crossed the parking lot. Waves of heat came up from the asphalt, shimmering. A canvas canopy covering steps leading to the shops and ticket booths flapped in an erratic breeze. The MTT bus door was open, and she saw Lydia standing on the second step, craning her neck to peer inside. Lydia had brown frizzy hair that Memphis humidity didn’t improve, pale skin dotted with freckles, and a nervous tic under one eye most of the time. Her skinny frame looked frozen in place, one foot on the top step, and one foot on the second, white-knuckled fingers clutching the sides of the open door. Wheezing sounds came from her open mouth.
     
    “Hey Lydia,” Harley began, but Lydia turned and launched her body outward like an Air Force rocket. She landed on Harley. Immediately engulfed in a babbling, hysterical grip, Harley made some wheezing noises of her own before she got out, “Let go!”
     
    When Lydia didn’t release her strangling hold, Harley used a move she’d learned in a recent course on driver safety and self-protection, and twisted free. Mr. Penney’s money had not been spent in vain. There was no need to use a stun gun at all.
     
    “Jeez, you’ve got a grip like a python,” she said when she could breathe. She firmly held Lydia at arm’s length in case she coiled around her again. “What happened?”
     
    “B-b-b-obby,” Lydia got out, and Harley frowned.
     
    “Bobby? Bobby who?”
     
    “No!” Lydia took a deep breath and said clearly, “Body!”
     
    “As in—dead?”
     
    Lydia’s head bobbed energetically up and down.
     
    Oh no. “Are you sure the person isn’t just napping?”
     
    Now Lydia’s teeth were chattering. “Pretty s-s-sure. But maybe ... he is?”
     
    Probably not. Lydia would have scared him awake by now. Harley felt queasy. She didn’t want to deal with this. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe the man was deaf. A lot of old geezers got all dressed up every year and wiggled their drooping butts, remembering a better time. That had to be it. She looked at Lydia.
     
    “I’ll check.” She stepped up into the bus. Lydia was known to overreact. Why Mr. Penney allowed her to take a vehicle onto the Memphis streets was beyond comprehension, but apparently Lydia was his niece or cousin, or something like that.
     
    Sitting in the fifth row by the window, an Elvis impersonator sprawled halfway off