Most Likely to Die (A Kate Jasper Mystery) by Jaqueline Girdner Read Free Book Online

assured him automatically. But I kept thinking that if I could look into everyone’s eyes just once, maybe I’d see…
    Wayne took another step forward, bent down, and looked into my eyes.
    “You have to go, don’t you?” he said.
    I was nodding my head before I even consciously heard his question.
    “Okay,” he agreed. “Together.”
    He straightened back up as I took my hand from the receiver to pass on the message.
    “I thought it would be best if we all met at Jack and Lillian’s house in Gravendale,” Aurora told me. “It’ll be easier for you to find than mine. I’m living in a cottage out in an experimental community in Lupton now. But Jack and Lillian and the kids are living in the very same house that Jack grew up in. Maybe you remember?” A grainy image of a white house with green shutters floated through my mind as she gave me the address and directions.
    “And, Kate, thank you,” she added finally. “I know you must be as concerned as I am.”
    I wanted a translation. But Aurora had said goodbye and hung up the phone before I could ask if “concerned” meant anything like “worried to death that Sid was murdered.”
    I turned to Wayne to ask him. I even opened my mouth. And then the doorbell rang. Almost as if they were connected.
    Wayne and I moved toward the door as a pair, he doing the final honors with the doorknob. But it was my arms that Becky Burchell stumbled into. No, I corrected myself, she was Becky Vogel now. But she was still stumbling.
    “Whoa,” she breathed into my face. “Hey there, Kate.” A connoisseur could have identified the brand of whiskey she’d been drinking from her breath. Even for me, the fumes were enough for a contact high.
    Which made me wonder how she’d gotten here. I looked out over her shoulders onto the driveway and saw a Fiat parked at an angle across the gravel. Lucky it was a short car. It would have been in the flowers otherwise.
    “Had to come,” Becky explained, her voice too high and too loud. She uncurled her spine until she was standing straight on her own two feet. Then she took a deep breath in. And out again.
    I backed up a step, holding my own breath, and regretting my earlier impulse to give everyone at Sid’s party my business card (with my home address and phone number conveniently stamped on the back).
    “Like to come in?” Wayne asked politely from my side. I could hear the forced note in that politeness, but I doubted if Becky could.
    “Well, thank you, kind sir,” Becky replied with a shaky little bow. Then she tilted her head sideways and stared up at Wayne’s face for a moment. And another moment. And another.
    I stared at her face as she stared at Wayne’s, trying to figure out what she was looking for. What was she thinking? But her face wasn’t giving out any clues. She still had the same delicate bone structure and open blue eyes that she used to, though there were a hell of a lot more wrinkles and even a few broken blood vessels in that face. And her smile was just as lopsided as it had been twenty-five years ago. Especially when she drank a bit too much. Or smoked a bit too much. Or—
    Something squeezed at my chest. What now? 1 thought. And then knew. Sadness. It wasn’t just Sid dying. It was seeing Becky like this. She’d been wild in high school, but sharp. And witty and fun and kind. And I’d cared for her. How had she become this drunken woman standing in front of me? When in the last twenty-five years had it happened?
    Becky gave her head a violent shake, and her face disappeared under a curtain of permed blond hair. Then she took an unsteady step into the entryway. Wayne gave her the elderly aunt treatment, steering her toward the living room with a hand on her elbow.
    “Wowie, zowie!” Becky whooped, opening up her arms and knocking away Wayne’s guiding hand in the process. “What a cool place. The sixties live!”
    I looked at my own living room, outraged. The sixties? True, the room was wall to