A Killing Gift by Leslie Glass Read Free Book Online Page B

save him was not being able to ask any questions about it. She'd recovered quickly enough from her exhaustion to tackle Bill Bernardino with a pad and pen. He wasn't answering her questions any better than she'd answered his.
    Bill, what had your father been working on these last weeks?
she wrote and passed over for him to read. As with the earlier questions she'd posed to him, this one sat heavily on the page, giving Bill ample opportunity to twist his mouth into any number of disgusted shapes while he pretended to decipher her perfectly legible handwriting.
    There was no nuance to the written word, no tone of voice to temper her line of questioning. The questions looked like something out of a survey, not a personal exchange between two people who'd lost a loved one. With April's side written down, the interview was between Bill and the page, not between her and him. So he was having an easy time avoiding her.
    His eyes looked down, away from her, when he tossed back, "How would I know what he was working on?"
    He might have said something. You two talked,
didn't you?
There was a time lag while she wrote this. There was another time lag while he read the reply.
    Worse than using sign language, this was like instant messaging with both people in the room. And one of them was determined not to help. April knew that Bill's mind was still on the blame track, but she wasn't going to stop trying to engage him in a dialogue.
    Her expression was neutral as she strung her questions out like beads on a necklace she would never get to wear. Several times she exchanged glances with Mike. April could read in his face that, like her, he was annoyed and hiding it well. Whether or not Bill had meant his threat of a scandal, it was on the table, putting the cops and prosecutor on different teams. It was clear that neither Mike nor Bill was going to share information, so she had to do the talking, because she was the one who'd been close to Bernardino. Too bad. Now the investigation might have to go needlessly deep into the grieving family's private affairs. Unless they found the killer soon, Bill was going to get less happy as the days went on. He certainly wasn't making it easy on himself now by dismissing her queries.
    "Yeah, we talked, but not about business. Look, I have to go." He tapped his watch and got to his feet, looking at them angrily as if one or both of them might try to keep him there. But neither Mike nor April made a move to delay him. He had come to them, after all. He could go when he pleased.
    "Look, we're going to have to go through his things at the house," Mike said as he opened the door.
    "Fine. The place is a fucking mess, though. He was getting ready to move." Bill paused long enough to shake his head. Then he made a point of checking his watch again. "Kathy will be here in a few hours."
    "I'm really sorry," Mike murmured.
    Anger flashed in Bill's face. "Yeah, well, something's wrong here. To get through thirty-eight years on the job and die like this." He shook his head. "It shouldn't happen."
    April agreed with him. It shouldn't have happened. She gripped the pen in her hand, wanting to add something, but Bill glared at her, triggering a guilt she didn't want to feel. It wasn't her fault that his father left the party alone. It wasn't her fault that she'd followed him too late. It wasn't her fault that he was dead, and she was still alive.
    She didn't want to feel it, but the guilt was there. Bernardino had been her boss, her friend. A part of her couldn't help believing that the timing of the events tonight and her position in them had some special meaning. And without her being aware of it, somehow the fault really was hers. Chinese guilt made for an extensive menu, and numbers one through a hundred were weighing her down at the moment.
    Her cell phone rang almost immediately after Bill left, and she forgot that she couldn't speak. She punched talk, but only the sound of air came out of her mouth when she tried