Asylum by Jeannette de Beauvoir Read Free Book Online Page B

all right?”
    I took a deep breath. “No,” I said, and even I could hear the tremor in my voice. I took another swallow of the wine. “Boulanger’s assigned me to monitor the police department until they solve these murders, and—”
    I broke off as Lukas entered the kitchen. The kid had enough on his plate with his mother in the hospital; he didn’t need to think his stepmother was falling apart, too. “So what horrible task has your father assigned you that’s in violation of child labor laws?” I asked.
    He made a face. “Claudia’s just mad ’cause she’s scared about Mom, and it’s easier to be mad than scared,” he said perceptively. He got a soda from the refrigerator and hopped up on the stool his sister had vacated. “Mom’s in the hospital,” he told me.
    “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry, Lukas. Has your stepdad called yet? Do you know how she’s doing?”
    “We’re supposed to call after nine,” Ivan said. “We’ll know pretty soon.” He paused, put an arm lightly around Lukas’s shoulders. “She’s going to be fine,” he said.
    “I know.” Lukas’s voice sounded casual, but the fear in his eyes betrayed him.
    I drew in a deep breath. “Let’s go out,” I suggested, meeting Ivan’s eyes. He hated giving the kids junk food in about the same proportion that they loved eating it. “Instead of just waiting around here to make the call.”
    Lukas brightened immediately. “McDonald’s?” he suggested. “St. Hubert?”
    “ Not McDonald’s,” Ivan intervened, but he was already turning off the oven. “That’s a good idea,” he said to me across the room, relief in his eyes. Even Claudia couldn’t sulk, we had found, when eating greasy French fries out of a greasy paper wrapper.
    And so we went to St. Hubert, and it was only as we were waiting in line under its bright neon lights that I remembered the fast food place shared a last name with the first of that summer’s victims. And found that I suddenly wasn’t hungry at all anymore.
    *   *   *
    Margery was fine.
    The kids went to bed, exhausted and relieved, and Ivan and I sat together in the living room, our fingers entwined, my head on his shoulder. “So,” he said softly, “are you okay?”
    “I guess so,” I said. I was thinking that I didn’t have much to complain about in the grand scheme of things. I wasn’t in a hospital, recovering from an unexpected operation. I wasn’t dead.
    “You need to work this weekend?” His tone was neutral; both Ivan and I have jobs that often demand irregular hours, and we were used to it, used to coordinating fluctuating schedules.
    “No,” I said, and then amended it. “Probably not, unless something comes up. I’ll find out on Monday what’s going on with the investigation, and talk to the mayor.”
    “So he’s using you as a sort of glorified go-between?”
    I sighed. “Something like that,” I said. “I make fun of him, I know, but I think maybe he’s hoping that someone outside the establishment might see something that everybody else is too close to the investigation to see. And it’s possible.”
    Ivan thought about it. “Do you think you can?”
    I shrugged and nestled in more comfortably to his shoulder. “I don’t know. I’ve gotten closer than I thought I would, and it’s … well, it’s not easy. I’m working with one of the detectives on the case—an Anglo, Ivan, you’d like him—and so far all I’ve done is see an overview. I don’t know what on earth I can come up with that the professionals aren’t seeing, but I’ll keep at it as long as monsieur le maire wants me to.”
    “Just stay safe.”
    “Of course I will. I’m not in any danger,” I said, before remembering Julian’s driving. Well, not in any danger from the criminal element, anyway.
    The telephone rang on Sunday afternoon, the most comfortable time of the weekend for us all: the kids had settled in, we’d done something reasonably fun together on Saturday,