Backfire by Catherine Coulter Read Free Book Online Page A

Williams doesn’t have perfect pitch and he wishes he had mine,” Emma said matter-of-factly. “I sure hope Giovanni will like my
Rhapsody in Blue.
”
    “Of course he will. Emma, I really don’t think you should be calling the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra by his first name. Maybe best to call him Mr. Rossini. You’re eleven. You want to show him respect.”
    Emma was silent for a moment, a frown between her eyebrows, identical to her mother’s. “I know I’m only a kid, but he asked me to call him Giovanni. He said he’d like me to go to Milan to study with Pietro Bianci.” She said the name slowly, careful to get the pronunciation right.
    Molly went on alert. “When did this happen?”
    “Yesterday at Davies Hall, while you and Dad were trying to get Cal and Gage to behave—before Dad—” Emma swallowed. “He doesn’t think Mrs. Mayhew is the right teacher for me anymore.”
    Molly, momentarily distracted, said, “Not only does Mrs. Mayhew know every single serious piece of music for the piano in the universe, she’s played most of them, including Gershwin, both in Paris and London.”
    “Mrs. Mayhew is very old, Mama; that’s what Giovanni—Mr. Rossini—said. He told me her teaching isn’t what it used to be.”
    Emma’s eighty-two-year-old piano teacher had elegance, style, and immense talent and goodwill. She had
known
George Gershwin. Who cared if she didn’t play as well as she did fifty years ago? As for Emma going to Italy to study at her age? Not a chance. She wanted to tell Emma she wasn’t about to let her out of her sight until she was twenty-one, maybe even thirty-five, not after what had happened five years ago, but the words fell out of her head. She swallowed. She would have a talk with Mr. Rossini, but even that didn’t seem important now. Ramsey was fastened to more high-tech machines than she’d ever seen in one place. He could still die. Tears gushed up into her throat, and she had to swallow to keep them down.
    But Emma knew, of course. She rushed to Molly, squeezed herself against her. “Dad will be all right, Mama.” She pulled away a bit. “I had a dream about him on Wednesday night, the night before—it was Thanksgiving, and we were all sitting around the table and he was carving a turkey about as big as our backyard, and he was singing ‘Roll out the Barrel.’ He looked really good, Mama. He looked happy.”
    Molly drew in a deep breath. Thanksgiving was six days away. She was not going to lose it again in front of her child. “I’ve never heard your father sing that song.
”
    “Neither have I, but he sang it in a big deep booming voice. It was sort of catchy.”
    “I wonder how much that turkey weighed,” Molly said. “Do you think Safeway will have one that big?”
    Emma smiled. “Not a chance. That turkey must have weighed one hundred pounds. I think we’d eat leftovers for a year. I hear Mrs. Hicks.”
    Molly called out, “Cal, Gage, would the two of you stop trying to break each other’s heads? Are you ready to go, Em?”
    But Emma wasn’t looking at her mother, she was staring out the window.

Harry smoothly turned his beloved dark blue Shelby Mustang onto Geary Street.
    “Why don’t you tell me about the old newspaper photo of Judge Dredd with an X through his face you found at the scene?” Eve said.
    He whipped around and looked at her. “How’d you know—well, yeah, I’m surprised that bit got out. Yeah, that’s what we found. Sitting under the big hydrangea bush in the backyard.”
    Eve wasn’t about to tell him she knew because she’d overheard him and Cheney talking about it. “The shooter rubbing our noses in it?”
    “That’s what I think.” He gave her another surprised look.
    Eve said, “So we’re going to meet the two FBI hotshots at Ramsey’s house in Sea Cliff, check out how the photo got in the hydrangea? Check out the beach for signs of the Zodiac?”
    “The forensic team couldn’t find