Read TREASURE KILLS (Legends of Tsalagee Book 1) for Free Online Page B

started opening those long locked doors in her mind where she had stored up all that hidden indoctrination she’d gotten from her hippie parents, Squeaky and Goat. Her father, Goat, who’d lived in a perpetual cannabis fog, had always carried with him a ragged paperback copy of Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land from which he would quote passages to her in his more lucid moments. The one she remembered, the one he always used those times he’d start to look up a passage and would lose his train of thought, was, “Thou art God.” Sunny never quite knew the context of the phrase, but now that she’d become a Neo-Wicca it spoke to her. She could worship everything and anything—trees, rocks, buttons, asparagus, spiders, dogs, cats, dolphins, whales, fence posts, all humans regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin, and all else in between. She could just about make up the rules as she went along. She could also pick her own top god, which in Sunny’s case was a goddess, or The Goddess, or Mother God.
    Sunny had no animosity toward her foster parents. They were good, kind, and decent folks who rescued her during her adolescence when her alternative would’ve been bleak and dark. In fact, as her attitude evolved from surly and ungrateful teen to somewhat of a mature adult, she discovered a great affection for them. They were as close as she’d ever come to having normal parents, but those first eleven years of her life, the most formative, clouded that perspective. Buck and Lorene had no children of their own, so when Buck died, and Lorene’s Alzheimer’s condition required her to be confined to a nursing home, Sunny quit her job and came back home to Tsalagee to look after the Buchanans’ modest estate. Her city apartment living and cubicle-intensive work environment proved too confining to her new religious practices. A small town, rural setting became an opportunity dropped at her feet.
    * * *
    Punch cut the boat motor twenty-five feet from shore and fastened on his lure—a new Balsa Boogie Crankbait. He’d bought three to see what color worked best: the yellowish Homer, the orange-ish Fried Green Tomato, and the mostly red Plum Crazy. Kinda expensive, he thought, but the guy at Bass Pro said these little babies would excite the bass so much they’d wet themselves. Then the ole boy laughed; sort of like a madman, as Punch recalled. With that mental picture, he decided to go with the Plum Crazy first. This early June evening seemed perfect for fishing. The sun wouldn’t set for maybe two hours or so, and the lake gleamed like a sheet of glass.
    His first cast fell in the water about ten feet short of where he aimed, so after a quick crank, he gave the next cast a little more wrist. This one sailed high about four feet beyond the water’s rocky edge and over a stand of thick sumac and brambles.
    “Dang it,” Punch said quietly. He looked around quickly to see if any other anglers sat out on the lake near him. He felt durn glad White Oxley had come up with a toothache, and decided not to come out fishing with him this evening. This was downright embarrassin’.
    He reeled in a little and yanked the rod, hoping the lure would snap free from the brush. It gave a little but didn’t come into the water.
    “Hey!” someone shouted from behind the brambles and brush at about where he thought his lure lay. It sounded like a woman’s voice.
    “You okay?” Punch hollered back.
    “Well, no. I’ve got this red fish-hooky thing in me,” came the response.
    “It’s Plum Crazy,” Punch said.
    “Damn straight it’s crazy!”
    “No, I mean the lure. It’s called a Plum Crazy.”
    “Aren’t you supposed to keep these things in water?”
    “Well... I... Here, don’t move. I’ll come help you get it out.”
    Punch angled the boat toward the shore with the trolling motor. When the bow hit the rocky shore, he reached in his tackle box and grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers, then jumped