Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

drink of water of a boyfriend; she can pack it away with the best of them despite her diminutive stature.
    I put Trixie on the leash and headed down toward the river. This route would lead me away from the village and away from anything that brought up bad memories. I would avoid Beans, Beans and the police station, and be able to enjoy the peace and serenity that walking with my dog along a beautiful waterway would bring. I had made it halfway down the street and was almost to the river when a pickup truck pulled around the corner and screeched to a stop in front of me. A woman with short spiky hair and a better body than her blog pictures would suggest jumped out of the truck and came toward me. Trixie let out a low growl, assuming that this wasn’t a friend.
    “You Bergeron?”
    I recognized her as the lovely Mrs. Miller from the blog. “I am.” This woman had obviously spent some time in the gym since Carter or one of his blog staff had taken those pictures of her. Her upper arms were toned and tight, jutting out from a fitted tank top that accentuated a large, but impressively perky, set of boobs. Her stomach was flat. Her workouts, however, hadn’t seemed to do much about chunky thighs and a rather comprehensive bottom; I assumed she would get to those parts now that the upper body was such a specimen of fitness.
    “Come with me,” she commanded, getting back into her truck cab.
    I stood by the side of the road without moving, curling Trixie’s leash into my hand, drawing the dog closer to me. Mrs. Miller waited expectantly in her car. Finally, when she saw that I wasn’t getting in, she rolled down the passenger side window. “I said to get in!” She stared at me with big round blue eyes, unadorned by makeup but with the longest, darkest lashes I had ever seen. Mrs. Miller had probably been a looker before she had fallen prey to the physical horrors of middle age. Once she got the thighs and the butt worked out, she would be a fine-looking lady.
    She was obviously used to people listening to her but she had never met me. I decided that just walking away would be the best course of action, so I pulled Trixie to my side and began to amble down the street, even though my instincts told me to run like the dickens. Behind me, I heard Mrs. Miller make a sharp U-turn, knocking over a garbage can that had been set out for Monday morning pickup, and follow behind me at a slow pace.
    “You know they’ve got my husband in jail, right?” she called from her truck window. Her tone had a faint overtone of accusation.
    I kept staring straight ahead. The woman was scaring the crap out of me although I wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t trying to run me down, but she was clearly agitated and she had the “guns” that Greg could only dream of. And that could probably crush my trachea with one chop. “No, I didn’t know,” I said. That was certainly an interesting turn of events, though.
    “Manslaughter,” she spat out.
    Just as Crawford had predicted. I wondered how the police could arrest Miller without the ME’s report, but Crawford had seemed pretty sure that this was the way it would go down. “I’m sorry?” I said, not convinced that I should be.
    “You were there. You tell the cops that he had nothing to do with it,” she continued, now parallel to me and close enough to touch. Riding in a pickup gave her the advantage of being at eye level, something a car wouldn’t.
    “I can’t do that. I was there.”
    “Yeah, but they had a fight. Instigated by that louse Wilmott.”
    “Your husband punched him in the head. Hard. He died. Draw your own conclusions.” Although I still wasn’t convinced that was the cause of death, I wanted Mrs. Miller to consider the fact that it could possibly be.
    She thought about that for a minute, resting her head on the steering wheel. When she picked her head up, her face had gone slack. “Oh, and sorry about the black eye.” Something in her now nonthreatening tone made me stop walking. I turned toward her. “Eat a lot of papaya and pineapple and mix two tablespoons of salt with two tablespoons of lard or vegetable oil and spread it over your eye. Make sure it’s closed.” She saw the look on my face; I wasn’t a lard type of girl. Vaseline was the closest I got to anything moisturizing. “Trust me. It helps with blood circulation. And the papaya and the pineapple make the discoloration go away faster.” Her tone was rough but her suggestions kind. I