Read Mercy & Mayhem: A Mercy Mares Cozy Mystery for Free Online Page A

I had a watch on. I can remember her vitals. Do you want them?” I proceeded to rattle them off as if they had anything at all to do with the task at hand, but of course, they didn't. He was looking more and more perturbed as my nervous chatter continued. Why was I sweating so profusely all of a sudden? I needed air. I needed a nap. I needed anything that would get me out of this pickle and do it quickly because this wasn't going well at all.
     
    The dog - I forgot his name already - was whimpering outside the office door. We were each a little stunned for a moment by the sudden noise and that gave us long enough to catch our breath before we moved on to the next pressing question that the Sheriff had for me.
     
    "Can I let the dog in?" I don't know why I asked, but it seemed like the only thing I could ask that wouldn't land me in a whole heap of trouble.
     
    Kathy must have felt sorry for me because she nodded and opened the door for the dog.
     
    Thank goodness. I needed something to hold onto and this dog fit the bill.
     
    "Okay, well, that's all I have for you now. If you remember anything that you may have forgotten to tell me, Miss Mares, here is my card, you call me and let me know, day or night. Anything at all. He moved to leave.
     
    I followed, feeling like my job was on the line and asked him the most important question of all. "Am I in trouble here?"
     
    "No, why would you think that? Anytime there is a death, it is my job to investigate. I wouldn't be doing my job right if I didn't at least get to the bottom of how a perfectly fine, relatively healthy man walks into the same facility, he comes in every morning to visit his ill wife and then has a small conversation with you, suddenly ends up dead in the office where he shouldn't have access to unless someone opened the door for him. You see, what I don't understand is what happened after you spoke to him in his wife's room?” The Sheriff sure didn't pull any punches.
     
    "Number one, I never spoke to him in her room. And, you really believe I killed this man?” I felt my blood boiling.
     
    "Well, did you?" His eyebrows quirked up.
     
    I didn't say a word, partly because I didn't know what he wanted me to say and partly because there was nothing to say.
     
    Was this a murder investigation? Did I miss the part where an autopsy was conducted and the scene was taped off while a crew checked for clues. What was going on? What didn't I see and why was I being treated like a suspect?
     
    I turned around, surprised to see that each of my fellow employees was standing watching this whole thing unfold. The looks on their faces revealed what they were thinking. They were wondering the same thing I suspected the Sheriff was wondering: Did I have anything to do with Mr. Knott's death?
     
    If I didn't know any better I'd think that I was in a very bad dream and I'd soon wake up. I'd worked too long and too hard to ever want to jeopardize everything just to kill some man I had just met and only briefly at that. Why would anyone think that I had any reason to murder him or anyone for that matter? I'm just a forty-four-year-old divorcee who lives in a double wide trailer that I purchased on my own with my hard-earned money and had no skeletons in my closet.
     
    For the few hours I had left of this first shift, I kept quiet and did exactly as I was told, when I was told. After about three hours, Kathy didn't loosen up. She never showed me her softer, more charming side, but the grunts weren't as loud and the glares didn't last as long as they had in the beginning and, lucky for me, the family that I was ordered to stay away from never made it in on my shift. I guess, I should have been thankful for that, but it just didn't feel right. A man died with us and no one, including those that were supposed to be in charge handled any of the process right. I didn't like it and something smelled fishy about the whole situation, but I didn't want to dig a larger hole for