Homicide Related by Norah McClintock Read Free Book Online Page A

about cell phones was that you could take them anywhere and when you answered them, you could be anywhere. If he wanted to be sure where she was, he should have called her on her home phone, except that nine times out of ten when he did that her mother picked up. He could always hear the frost in her voice when she realized who was calling. Most of the time she said Beth wasn’t home. Most of the time it turned out she was lying.
    â€œHey,” Beth said. “What’s up?” Hearing her voice eased some of the tightness in his chest.
    â€œWhere are you?” Dooley said.
    â€œWhere do you think I am? I’m at home. And so are you.” She must have seen his uncle’s number on her readout. “I thought you were closing tonight.”
    â€œI got off early,” Dooley said. “What are you doing?”
    â€œHomework.”
    â€œAlone?”
    â€œOf course, alone,” she said. But he couldn’t help wondering: Why of course? She hadn’t been alone last night. She’d been with her history team. Nor, as far as he could tell, had she been alone the night before. “You sound funny. Is everything okay?”
    â€œYeah. How’d you make out with that team thing?”
    â€œSame old.” She sighed and Dooley pictured her leaning back in her chair, maybe even moving to her bed. He pictured her in what she usually wore to bed, which was mainly little tank tops and drawstring pants. Boy, he loved those drawstrings. He wondered if Nevin had ever pulled them. “What about you? What’s up with you?” she said.
    â€œNothing much,” Dooley said. Well, except that his uncle was down at the morgue identifying a body. But he didn’t want to get into that. It would just open up doors that he had already told Beth were closed. “I’m off tomorrow night.” He hesitated. He didn’t want it to sound like that was the only reason he had called because it wasn’t. For once, it wasn’t even close. “I don’t suppose your mom has plans?”
    â€œWhy?” Beth said. “Did you want to come over?”
    He did, but not if Beth’s mother was going to be there. Beth said she didn’t care what her mother thought. She said her mother couldn’t tell her who she could see and who she couldn’t, and Dooley bet that was true. But all the same, he hated going over there when her mother was there because, on top of everything else, she never let them have any privacy. No way would she let them go into Beth’s room. That meant they were stuck in the dining room, maybe doing homework together, or they were in the living room watching TV or a movie, with Beth’s mother more annoying than all those commercials, the way she kept interrupting, checking up on them. She didn’t even try to be subtle. She would appear in the doorway and stare at Dooley, letting him know that she had his number, she knew exactly what kind of guy he was, and if he valued his life, he had better keep his hands off her daughter.
    â€œI want to see you,” he said.
    â€œI don’t know,” Beth said, slowly, drawing the words out, rattling him a little because he still couldn’t believe he was going with a girl like her, and he wondered sometimes—okay, a lot —exactly what she saw in him, especially when there were guys like Nevin around, guys she could debate with, if that’s what she wanted to do, while she was riding around in a midnight blue Jag. “She has her book club tomorrow night.”
    Oh. Possibly the one thing worse than a bunch of cops and retired cops playing poker was a bunch of middle-aged women earnestly discussing some book that had recently been on Oprah’s bedside table.
    â€œAnd it’s at your place, huh?”
    Beth laughed. Was that a good sign?
    â€œThey’re going to see the movie version of the book they read last month. They do that sometimes. After that,