Distemper by Beth Saulnier Read Free Book Online Page B

already.”
    “Man, he better not,” O’Shaunessey said. “He lasts six more days, I’m up three hundred bucks.”
    “Right, but if he lasts two weeks,
I’m
up three hundredbucks,” said Melissa, who’s way less sweet than she looks. “And since I started the pool, it seems only fair.”
    “Flag on the play,” O’Shaunessey said, and threw his napkin at her. “The fix is in. Clearly.”
    “Nah,” Mad said. “He’s still back at the joint. Bill’s got him working on some goddamn timeline, history of homicides in Walden
     County or some crap. Probably never run it. He’s just trying to torture the kid. Says it’s for his own good.”
    Melissa snorted. “Right. Twelve hours down in the morgue. That’s bound to teach him something. If the rats don’t get him,
     the asbestos will.”
    “Who was that at the door?” I asked Marci when she got back.
    She shrugged. “Some old man. He had the wrong house. I think he may have been looking for whoever lived here before us.”
    “You mean the biker fraternity?”
    “Well, no, probably the people before them. He said he hadn’t been back in a while. I offered to let him use the phone but
     he said he didn’t want to disturb us.”
    “So screw ‘em,” O’Shaunessey said cheerfully. “Who’s for seconds?”
    All our Thursday night dinners have one thing in common: you know they’re over when we run out of booze. It’s a good thing
     Friday is recycling day, or we’d spend the rest of the week tripping over empties. That night, the party broke up around eleven,
     which is on the early side. Mad usually sticks around until I evict him, but that night he and Emma repaired to his lair at
     ten, presumably to act out his Princess Di fantasies.
    The guests always do the cleaning—I’m hospitable,but I’m not crazy—and I was putting away dry dishes when the doorbell rang again. I opened the door, and there under the porch
     light was just about the last person I would have expected.
    “First rule of home security,” said Detective Brian Cody. “Keep the front door locked.” Two of the dogs started barking and
     lunging at him and I told them to heel. This did no good whatsoever, so I grabbed their collars (my left wrist didn’t thank
     me for it) and yelled at him to come in. He was wearing jeans, ratty sneakers, and a black leather jacket over a navy Red
     Sox sweatshirt. It looked a lot better on him than the suits had. Then I noticed he had the
Monitor
folded under his arm. Uh-oh.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “I promised you a security check.”
    “I thought you were sending someone.”
    “I wanted to talk to your friend Marci, get some basic information just to be safe, so I decided to come over myself.”
    “At eleven?”
    “Is it too late?”
    “Nope. I’m a night owl.”
    “Good guard dogs you’ve got there. Yours?”
    I shook my head. “That lump on the couch is mine. Her name is Shakespeare. She’s part German shepherd, part beagle. She’d
     play fetch with a rapist. The big black poodle is Tipsy. He belongs to my roommate Emma. The shepherd is C.A.’s. He’s a purebred,
     real champion stock. Her mom’s family’s really into the dog-show thing. Name’s Nanki-Poo.”
    “That’s humiliating.”
    “I know. C.A. hates it. She got him from her grandmother when the dog was already three, so there was no changing it. Believe
     me, she tried. I guess her grandma’s all freaky for Gilbert and Sullivan.”
    “So she named it after the fellow from
The Mikado
?”
    “How’d you know that?”
    “My mom’s all freaky for Gilbert and Sullivan.”
    “Oh.” We stared at each other for a while. I could see the outline of his gun under his sweatshirt and hoped there was nothing
     particularly incriminating in the living room; good thing I wasn’t wearing Adam’s HEMP IS HEAVEN T-shirt. “Are you going to come in, or would you rather just loiter here in the doorway?”
    “Loitering is underrated.”
    “Want a beer? Or are