Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4) by Annette Meyers Read Free Book Online Page A

barre. She looked slightly faded, blurred around the edges, no longer sharply defined.
    Hi ,Silvestri’s taped voice said . It’s ten o’clock Friday night . I’ll be in Atlanta, so you won’t be able to reach me .That was it. His words sounded cold and formal .
    “Dammit,” she said aloud. “Might just as well have been a call from my brother, if I had a brother.”
    The machine beeped, another message . Les? It’s me again. I miss you .He cleared histhroat . Why do I feel you’re flying by the seat of your pants again? Whatever it is, stay out of it. The answering machine reset itself and clicked off.
    “Up yours, Silvestri,” she said, giving him the finger. What did he think? She couldn’t get along without him?
    She pressed the button that cleared the tape and kicked off her shoes, flexing and pointing her toes. She opened a window and closed the blinds, then took off her skirt, jacket, and blouse, laying them on the dining table. At the barre she did a warm-up workout in her underwear. She finished with a deep curtsy, acknowledging phantom applause and accepting imaginary bouquets.
    She rose and turned out the lights in the foyer, in the dining room, showered, and lay on her bed in the dark listening to the night sounds in her building. She heard the last garbage collection, the elevator, her neighbor coming home. Her refrigerator, the wind tap-tapping on her wooden blinds through the open window.
    She was like a walnut shell without its meat, because she’d gotten used to her life with Silvestri. She had grown dependent on him, and she hated the way she felt without him. As if there were something missing, that she was incomplete.
    But you love him, you dope , she thought, entering into a dialogue with herself.
    Yes, but when you love someone, you cede control .
    Are you some kind of control freak?
    No. Yes. Dammit all, maybe.
    How would you feel if you were married, then? Would it change anything?
    Oh, God. She slid under the covers and pulled them over her head. It had all been so simple before Silvestri; now it was so complicated.
    She closed her eyes. Think about something else. Think about your premonition that Brian was dead, even murdered. Premonition, nothing. Anyone who doesn’t show up on his first day where he’s going to collect two hundred and a quarter big ones has to be dead.
    She was wide awake. So it was going to be that kind of night, was it? She sat up and put on the light. Her little digital clock radio said 12:30. Hell, it was Friday night. She could sleep in tomorrow. Friday night. It wasn’t as if she had plans. The only thing on her schedule was dinner with Carlos. They’d met in a dance class when she’d first come to New York and had danced in the chorus of one musical after another until Wetzon, not fancying herself as an aging chorus girl, had called it quits and formed a partnership with Xenia Smith to recruit brokers for Wall Street.
    Carlos had gone from Princely Service, his successful sideline cleaning business, where he employed out-of-work dancers—gypsies—to clean apartments all over the city, to Broadway choreographer. And their friendship had only deepened over the years.
    She had just finished the third chapter of Jack Finney’s glorious Time and Again , when a big wet spot appeared on her page, then quickly another and another. What the hell ... ? She looked up at her ceiling and a blob of water landed on her nose. Serious water then began to leak through a crack in her ceiling and through the top of her ceiling fan.
    She leaped out of the bed and frantically began pushing the bed out of the way with such force that she knocked over the small sewing table on the other side. And in the nick of time, too, because a big chunk of plaster slammed into the section of the floor where the bed had been, where she had lain.
    Screaming in fury, she edged around the waterfall to her bathroom. Water was pouring through several areas of the ceiling. She grabbed her robe