The Trap by Joan Lowery Nixon Page B

opposite the desk. “I can’t sleep,” she told me. “I knew at the time I shouldn’t have had that coffee, and I was right. Millie Lee should have made decaf.”
    “Do you want me to make you a mug of hot milk?” I asked.
    “No thanks,” Glenda answered. “I’d rather just talk. Is that all right with you?”
    “Sure,” I said, and waited for what she had to say.
    In a way, I was surprised when Glenda said, “I can’t understand why there have been so many accidents.” A tear rolled down the side of her nose. Almost angrily, she brushed it away with the back of one hand and said, “At least Gabe wasn’t killed when he fell.”
    I leaned forward, hoping to get as much information as I could. “Tell me again about the first man who fell and how it happened.”
    “Albert Crouch? They think he was on the outside balcony of their home, which is on the edge of a ravine,and must have had a dizzy spell and lost his balance. Betty Jo saw him lying down on the rocks in the ravine when she got home from a trip to Kerrville to stock up on groceries.”
    “Could anyone else have been in the house with him?”
    “No. Betty Jo and Albert lived alone, except for her cousin who was visiting, but she was with Betty Jo.”
    “Did Mr. Crouch often have dizzy spells?”
    She shrugged. “Not that I know of. It was Deputy Sheriff Foster who came up with that answer. What else would have made someone fall off the balcony?”
    For a moment there was real fear in her eyes. “All three falls—they
had
to have been accidents. What else could they have been?”
    Trying to soothe her, I said, “If they were ruled accidents, then there’s no reason for the deputy to be suspicious about any of them.”
    But maybe, I thought, he should be.

THE NEXT MORNING WAS SATURDAY, BUT I FIGURED THAT LAW enforcement was a seven-day-a-week business and with luck I’d find the deputy in. I asked Glenda’s permission to drive into town to run errands, and she was happy to let me. The bright morning sunlight, the arrival of a new crossword puzzle magazine, and the sight of three complacent cows chewing the sprigs in her yard seemed to have eased her fears of the night before.
    As I walked to the carport, Luis drove up in his pickup truck. “Hi,” he said from the open window.
    I walked over, smiling at him. “Are you working here today?” I asked, thinking I might change plans and hang around for a while.
    “No,” he said. “I’ll be near here, though, and I thought I’d take the chance of seeing you, just to say hello. I’m glad I got here before you left.”
    “Luis,” I said, desperately needing someone I could talk to, “I’m going to town to talk to the deputy sheriff.”
    Luis looked at me with surprise, but he didn’t speak. He waited for me to explain.
    I told him my suspicions and worries and that I’d talked them over with a friend online. “We both think Uncle Gabe might still be in danger,” I said.
    “
You
are the one who might be in danger, if this is true and you talk to the wrong people or ask the wrong questions,” Luis answered. He frowned as he added, “But, Julie, remember—the men who fell were old. There was nothing to make the deputy suspect that someone had caused their falls.”
    “What about the missing paperweight?” I insisted.
    “You didn’t see it in Mrs. Barrow’s house, but that doesn’t mean someone used it as a weapon, then took it.”
    Desperately, I said, “And there are the small nail holes above the top step to the observatory.”
    “Which the deputy said had been put there when the steps were built.”
    I looked right into his eyes. “Were they?”
    “No, they were not,” Luis said. “Maybe you’re right to turn the problem over to the deputy.”
    I rested a hand on his arm. “Thanks,” I said.
    “For what?”
    “For believing me. For not saying this is all in my imagination.”
    He gripped my hand in his. “Tell the deputy what you told me,” he said. “Then back