Diagnosis: Danger by Marie Ferrarella Read Free Book Online

would you know that?”
    “I’m the executor of his ‘estate,’ such as it is.” Clancy had kidded her about it more than once, but no one was more surprised than she when he’d actually produced a slip of paper he called his will.
    Glancing at the detective, she saw an interested look come into his eyes. “It’s a joke. Clancy didn’t have an ‘estate,’ he had baseball cards.”
    “Baseball cards?” Mike echoed. Was she putting him on?
    “He collected baseball cards,” she explained. Pausing, she took a sip of the coffee he’d brought her, grateful for the gesture. “Had them in mint condition. Never even took them out of the wrapper.” She looked at Mike. “I just can’t see owning something you love and not handling it.”
    Why that simple statement made him feel so much warmer than he had a moment ago, Mike didn’t know. He attributed the shift to a faulty thermostat in the building’s basement, where the morgue was located.
    “And he left them to you?”
    She took another sip before answering. For a moment, her energy deserted her and she found herself wishing that the coffee was stronger. “His mother would have only thrown them out.”
    Finishing the unsatisfying coffee, he crushed the cup in his hand and tossed it into the wastebasket some ten feet away. “Tell me more about this mother.”
    Lucille Donovan was one of the few people on this earth she intensely disliked. “She’s one in name only. Her husband left her years ago. She took it out on Clancy every chance she could, always belittling him, saying that if he were more of a ‘regular boy,’ his father would have never walked out on them.”
    “Regular boy?” Mike echoed. He thought he knew what she meant, but he wasn’t sure.
    Natalya hated the term, but that was what Clancy had told her his mother had said. He’d tried not to look upset, but she knew it was eating him up inside. He blamed himself for his parents’ split for years, even though he’d just been seven at the time.
    She tried to give the detective as clear a picture as she could. “Clancy didn’t play sports, wasn’t suavelike his father supposedly was. Basically had the word victim tattooed on his forehead. Mostly the latter was all Lucille’s fault.”
    Although he had a hunch he knew where this was going, he asked, “Lucille?”
    “His mother,” Natalya clarified. “They hadn’t spoken in five years.”
    Didn’t sound like much of a family unit, Mike thought. But he’d make up his own mind when he got a chance to speak to her. In the meantime, there was something else he wanted to know.
    His eyes held hers. “What was your relationship like?”
    She knew what he was doing. If one path didn’t succeed, he was taking another. But it wouldn’t get him to where he thought he was going.
    “I was his ‘big sister,’ although technically, I’m only a month older.” She heard what sounded like a workshop saw being turned on and she tried not to imagine what was going on behind the closed doors.
    “Anything else?” Mike pressed.
    He interrupted her thoughts, bringing her back to their conversation. “Such as?”
    “Something more intimate?”
    The one note he was strumming was getting tiresome. “I already told you no.”
    “Fair enough,” he acknowledged. “How about him?” The question, he saw, surprised her. “Was he in love with you?”
    “He loved me,” she qualified slowly, as if measuring her words. “But he wasn’t ‘in love’ with me.”
    She was making a fine distinction. “And you know this because you’re a mind reader?” The question sounded cynical, but he didn’t mean it that way.
    Her mouth curved again in a semismile, as if she were sharing a joke with herself. “No, I know this because I was the wrong gender. Clancy was gay. Something else his mother berated him for.” She straightened just a little, turning to face him. “Look, if you’re trying to find out if I had anything to do with his