Down Don't Bother Me (9780062362209) by Jason Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

on, so I didn’t take offense. I said, “I’ll take coffee if you have it and it’s not too much trouble.”
    She frowned some more in that beautiful way of hers, but nodded. She summoned someone named Susan, and the wrinkle-eyed woman came back. Temple asked her to put on a pot. Susan looked at me like something she wanted to sweep into the street and walked quickly out.
    I said, “I’m just going to say it. I don’t think she likes me.”
    â€œShe doesn’t. But don’t take it personally. She doesn’t like anyone.”
    â€œEven you?”
    â€œSometimes. Sometimes I’m not sure. Frankly, she’s had a hard life. In some ways, terrible. But she’s been a great help to me, and I’m willing to put up with her moods, even when she goes a little sour on me.”
    â€œSo she takes care of you, you take care of her?”
    Temple sat down on the sofa. It was one of these things swallows you like a biblical whale. She crossed her legs at the knee and pointed one of the buskins into space. She gestured for me to sit, and I spread my towel on a leather chair across from her and settled into it. The white leather on the armrests smelled like wealth and comfort.
    Temple said, “A bit crude, but that’s basically it. Isn’t there anyone you take care of?”
    â€œOh, yeah.”
    â€œA kid?”
    â€œDaughter. She just turned twelve yesterday. Or thirty. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”
    I glanced around the big room. Rather subtly, I thought.
    She shook her head and grinned meanly at me and flipped her hair. She had a sexy, toothy look about her that reminded me a little of Gene Tierney. I wanted to put onmy finest JCPenney’s suit and comb my hair and solve her mystery for her.
    She said, “You can just ask me, you know?”
    I felt myself blushing. I looked at her and smiled and shrugged.
    â€œNo young ones of your own, I guess?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œSorry. This really isn’t my thing. Private-detecting, I mean.”
    â€œI guess not.”
    â€œI tried to convince your dad.”
    Temple said, “That’s not always so easy. Believe me, I know. My father tends to get what he wants.”
    â€œWell, I think what he wanted was a detective of some kind. Instead, he got me.”
    She waved her hand at me. She wore a ring fixed with a chunk of black stone big enough to choke an elephant. “I think what he probably wanted was you,” she said. “And here you sit. Big as life and wet as the lake. At least he seems to like you.”
    â€œMore than he likes your husband?”
    â€œWhy do you ask that?”
    â€œI don’t know. The way you said it, I guess. Your voice. It didn’t sound like you were talking about yourself. Top of that, your husband’s a reporter, and I have a sense that Mr. Luster has a fairly low opinion of the fourth estate. I think maybe he thinks Guy is out to get him.”
    â€œHe said that to you?”
    â€œNot in so many words, but yeah. This story he and Dwayne Mays were working on, for example.”
    â€œI don’t think . . .”
    The coffee must have already been on because just then Susan came back in with a tray of it. In front of Temple she set a cup made of paper-thin bone china. Me, she gave a thick porcelain mug that might have lived in a garage for a few years, or maybe the crawlspace under the house. Susan dipped her head facetiously at Temple and went out again.
    Temple watched her go. She looked at the door for a while after it shut, then turned back to me with hard eyes and said slowly, “I want be honest with you.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œIt’s no offense, okay, but I don’t need you here. I don’t need you and I don’t want you. Let’s be up front about that.”
    â€œSeems reasonable, really.”
    She ignored that. “You’re my father’s idiotic idea. Not mine. I tried talking