Michelangelo's Notebook by Paul Christopher Read Free Book Online Page B

Finn?”
    “I’d like to think so.”
    “Who do you think killed your boyfriend, and why would anyone have wanted to do anything so terrible?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “And if you were me, what would you be thinking?”
    “What you obviously have been thinking: that there’s some connection between the two deaths.”
    “Not deaths, Finn. Murders. There’s a world of difference.”
    “Does there have to be a reason?” Finn asked. “Couldn’t it just be coincidence?” Her voice was almost pleading. She was so tired it was almost a physical pain dragging at her. She felt as though she were the criminal, somehow, and not the victim.
    Delaney looked at her for a long, thoughtful moment. Finally he spoke. “What do you think would have happened if you’d come back half an hour later than you did? That’s the real question, isn’t it? Or what would have happened if you’d gone to Peter’s place instead?”
    “Why are you asking me a lot of stupid hypothetical questions? Peter’s dead. You don’t know why, I don’t know why, and it’s your job to find out.” She shook her head. “You keep on asking about the drawing. Why are you so goddamn interested in a drawing? I was wrong! It wasn’t Michelangelo, okay!”
    “Dr. Crawley had a dagger stuck in his throat. We think it’s Moroccan. Called a koummya. You know what that is?”
    “No.”
    “Peter might have been killed by the same kind of knife. Sure you never saw one around the museum?”
    “No!”
    “You’re sounding a little tired, Finn.”
    “Guess who made me that way.”
    Delaney looked down at the old Hamilton he wore. It was after one in the morning. “Do you have someone to stay with?”
    “Myself.”
    “You can’t stay here alone, child.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake! I’m not a child. I can take care of myself, all right?” It was taking everything in her power to hold back a flood of tears. All she wanted right now was to curl up in her bed and go to sleep.
    Delaney stood up. “Well then,” he said quietly, “I’d best be on my way.”
    “Yes, you’d best.”
    Delaney took a couple of steps toward the door, edging around the bloodstain. He turned. “You’re sure it was a Michelangelo, aren’t you?”
    “Yes,” she said flatly. “It was a Michelangelo. I don’t care what Crawley said or why he said it.”
    “Maybe saying it is what got him killed,” said Delaney. “Did you ever think of that? And your knowing about it might have gotten your friend Peter killed instead of you.”
    “You’re just trying to scare me.”
    “Now why would I want to do a thing like that?” He turned back to the door and let himself out. A few moments later she heard the thump of the elevator arriving and then it was gone. She was alone. She stared at the dark stain and then looked away. Why would he want to scare her, and why was he so interested in a drawing that perhaps wasn’t by Michelangelo at all?
    Finn climbed wearily to her feet, double-locked the door, put the chain on, edged around the carpet stain and went to her bedroom, leaving the living room light on; there was no way she was going to be able to sleep in the dark tonight.
    In the bedroom she stripped off her clothes, found a long “Ohio—Home of Elsie” T-shirt with a huge illustration of the daisy-necklaced cow on the front and slid into bed. She turned off the bedside lamp and lay there, light spilling over the end of the bed from the open doorway. She could hear the city around her like a huge storm of energy that never ended. The building creaked, there were strange echoing sounds from the elevator, a scream from the projects behind her, the rumble of somebody dragging open a window downstairs. Maybe she had been stupid to stay here tonight.
    She could remember when her father had died. She’d been fourteen. When her mother had told her that Dad had died from a massive heart attack in some godforsaken place in Central America while on a dig she’d lain in bed just