Flood Insurance

By James Walker Riley

Flood Insurance is a short mystery story, part of the anthology Murder They Wrought. It includes another story excerpt from this same anthology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Walker Riley
• Release date: Jul 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311612045

James Walker Riley

Born in Tampa, Florida but grew up in sunny Michigan (the land of the white, flaky sunshine you can ski or sled on). Now living in North Carolina where sun is really sun unless it’s liquid sunshine instead of the rare flaky kind. I work in a local community college writing center helping students perfect their essays (I'm veeerry picky).

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Flood Insurance

James Walker Riley

Smashwords Copyright 2015 James Walker Riley

Published by James Walker Riley at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes .This eBook story and the following example are licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This story may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This story is from the short story anthology Murder They Wrought. Discover other titles by James Walker Riley at http://Smashwords.com. or at your favorite eBook seller.

These stories are works of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental and are creations of the author’s imagination. Similarly, the locations are used in a completely fictitious manner.

Pink Lady

FLOOD INSURANCE

Revised October, 2015

By James Walker Riley

At two in the morning. Kalli Bates moved through the darkness by candle light. The air had turned cool after the storm knocked out the power, phone lines, and the cell phone tower and moved on to cause havoc somewhere else. Kalli hoped no one had been injured or, especially, killed.

Good thing she and her neighboring farmers already had their crops harvested and in storage. Roger Duncan, down the road a few miles, would be the worst hit by the flood, since his farm lay closest to the French Broad River branch.

Generations of the Bates family and their neighbors tilled the soil around Smithvale. Each generation witnessed sons, daughters, and entire families succumb to the lure of the greener pastures of asphalt, concrete, and steel until only a handful of farms remained and barns and homes rotted.

But, Daddy and Mama continued to toil in the fields all day and tended the livestock so Kalli could finish school and enlist in the Navy's Shore Patrol. They told her they were proud of her. They hadn't let her down. Damned if she'd let them down. She'd work herself