Dark Waters (The Jeff Resnick Mysteries) by LL Bartlett Read Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t have figured that out herself.
    “I think I’ll just head on up and check on her.”
    “Don’t wake her,” Evelyn ordered.
    Richard forced a smile and made a hasty exit.
    He trudged up the stairs and quietly opened the door to their bedroom. Brenda wasn’t in bed, but she sat by the window with her feet up on the hassock and her e-reader in hand. “Hi.”
    “Hi, yourself,” she said and switched off the device.
    “Evelyn said she told you to take a nap.”
    “If I were to lie down without you here, I’d never get back up again,” she said tersely.
    “It’s only a few more days.”
    “It seems like an eternity right now.”
    Richard moved closer and sat on the side of the bed. “Want to go to Ramon’s for lunch? They say spicy food can jumpstart labor.”
    “If I believed that, I’d drive us there in a heartbeat.” Brenda frowned and shook her head. “I don’t want to move from this spot. I could happily stay here for the rest of the day, but if I don’t come to lunch when called, there’ll be consequences.”
    “This visit isn’t turning out the way you thought it would.”
    Brenda looked down at the reader in her hand. “No.”
    He reached over to take her other hand. Her fingers clasped his, but then abruptly she disentangled them and sat up straighter. “The insurance company called while you were out.”
    “Oh?” he asked, wary.
    “When were you going to tell me about the boat?”
    “Tell you what?”
    She leveled an angry gaze at him.
    “You mean … the little problem down at the marina?”
    “Vandalism isn’t a
little
problem.”
    “They weren’t supposed to call the landline. I asked them to call my cell phone.”
    “Well, they didn’t.”
    “How pissed off are you?” he asked, dreading the answer.
    “Pretty pissed off,” she admitted, but then she sighed, the anger draining from her face. “How bad is it?”
    “Mostly cosmetic,” he said. “I’d already thought about updating the carpets and upholstery, and now you can choose what you’d like.”
    “I’m not setting foot on that boat.”
    “Ever?”
    She shrugged. “I never said that. But — ” she looked down at herself. “Not today. And not this week. And since you’ve already arranged to have it put into storage….” She let the sentence trail off, but then her expression hardened once again and, for a split second, she reminded him of her unforgiving older sister. “You
did
arrange to have it put into storage, didn’t you?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “I assume you took Jeffy with you this morning?”
    “He may have been there with me.”
    “You didn’t have to go in separate cars; or did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
    “He had somewhere else to go afterward.”
    “He seems to have found a lot to do the past couple of days. Are we ever going to see him again?”
    “You know he had to work a double shift yesterday.”
    “So what’s he doing today?”
    Richard shrugged. “I don’t know. Something with that reporter friend of his, I guess.”
    “No good can come of that,” Brenda muttered.
    Richard made no comment. Since Jeff was on the top of Brenda’s shit list, he decided to change the subject. “Da-Marr wants to borrow your car.”
    “What for?”
    “Evelyn wants him to cut the grass, but first he’s attempting to fix that old lawnmower in the garage.”
    “The one we were going to throw out?”
    He nodded.
    Brenda shrugged. “I don’t care. My keys are hanging up on the rack in the kitchen. He’s welcome to them.” She looked over at him and scowled. “You don’t want him to drive my car?”
    “Hey, it’s your car,” he said.
    “Yes, it is,” she reaffirmed. “Why are you worried about it?”
    “He doesn’t know the area. How’s he going to find a place that sells spark plugs?”
    “Oh, I don’t know — the yellow pages perhaps?”
    “Brenda!” It was unmistakably Evelyn. She pounded on the door. “It’s almost time for lunch.”
    “I’ll be down in