Goodbye Sister Disco by James Patrick Hunt Read Free Book Online Page B

on top of it. She set the cup of coffee on the table in front of him.
    Terry and Chet McGregor had moved to St. Louis a few months ago. They were from Knoxville, Tennessee. Chet was a big fellow, military-looking with his hair cut high and tight. Talked big too, and often. He was a sales engineer. Hastings did not like Chet much, when he gave it any thought. But he liked Terry well enough. She had been a teacher and a girls’ basketball coach for some time, but had given that up when she had Randi.
    She went back to the kitchen sink, turning to George as she conversed with him.
    â€œWere you out all night?” she said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou must be exhausted.”
    Hastings shrugged. “I’ll get a nap later today. Chet gone already?”
    â€œYes,” Terry said. She still had her Tennessee accent. Hastings thought it was pleasant. “He left at six thirty. He’s flying to Cleveland today. He should be back late tonight.”
    Hastings felt some relief. Chet McGregor made more money than Hastings, had a sweet wife and a lovely daughter, and was not a bad-looking dude. But he was one of those guys who always had a need to compete with other men. He would speak often of his days as a champion football player. Not pro or college, but high school. And when Randi told him that Amy’s dad had played baseball for the college team, he had looked at Hastings and said, “Really?” Finding it funny that Hastings had never mentioned it. The close friendship between the men’s daughters made social contact unavoidable. Hastings found himself being very quiet when he was around Chet McGregor. Hastings found Chet not irritating so much as tiresome. Chet liked to talk a lot.
    But Chet’s being a bore was a small thing to Hastings. Chet’s wife after all had been a great help to him and Amy. Her offer to put Amy up at any time had been entirely sincere. And the generosity had been extended without a moment’s thought as to whether it would inconvenience her. It was what people like Terry McGregor did.
    Had the McGregors moved to St. Louis, say, one year earlier, a friendship with them would probably not have come about. Eileen was an unregenerate snob and the likelihood of her taking up a friendship with the McGregors would have been slim indeed. She would have found Chet an unbearable oaf and would have dismissed his wife as a southern sorority yokel. And this conclusion would likely have been based on a five-minute encounter. Or a quick look at the woman’s clothes.
    Hastings himself was a bit of a snob. Indeed, that trait had in part drawn Eileen to him in the first place. But as Eileen would learn after marrying him, his snobbishness was of a different kind.
    Terry McGregor said, “Amy says you have a girlfriend now?”
    Hastings smiled. “Does she.”
    â€œYou been seeing the woman long?” Her tone was pitched just about right. Curious and friendly, though not prying.
    â€œA few months.”
    â€œThat’s good,” Terry said.
    That could have meant anything. Perhaps Amy had worried aloud that he was lonely. Or that it meant that he had stopped thinking, even in small ways, that Eileen would undergo a full-scale character change and come back to him. Maybe the woman was glad to know he had a lover and companion. She wouldn’t be the only one.
    Hastings said, “I can drop the girls off at school.”
    â€œYou have time?” Terry said.
    â€œSure.”
    *   *   *
    A half hour later, Hastings was motoring down I-64 toward the police department, Forest Park on his right, downtown and the Arch coming into view in front of him. It was catching up with him now, the lack of sleep, and he decided that he would go to the cot room and get a quick nap as soon as he got in. It was that or set his head on his desk, because he could only fight it for so long.
    But then his cell phone rang and he answered it, and it was