Ms. Simon Says by Mary McBride Read Free Book Online Page A

flannel shirt was a bit less washed-out than its predecessor, and these jeans, while faded, didn’t appear to be ripped in any strategic places.
    “Thanks.” He took the book from her, shoved it in the gym bag he was carrying, then said, “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
    “That was quick,” Shelby said. She smiled up at him as she angled her head toward his bookcase. “I see you’re a student of military history.”
    Callahan gave her such an odd, forbidding look that Shelby immediately regretted her impulsive comment about his reading preference. The expression on his face was similar to the one she’d witnessed earlier, in the hallway outside her apartment door. That cold,
leave me the hell alone
look. Clearly, the man had no intention of sharing anything of his personal life with her, even something as relatively insignificant as his books. She was just his job.
Such as it was.
    Before he could come up with some sort of snide reply, Shelby turned her back on him. “Well, let’s hit the road,” she said, walking to the door.
    Mick secured his deadbolts, then trotted down the stairs in Ms. Shelby Simon’s hot little wake. He could tell she was pissed—boy, was she pissed!—at his lack of a response to her comment about his books, and he couldn’t really blame her. It was just that she’d caught him off guard with that “student of military history” phrase, which just happened to be the way Julie used to introduce him to her medical cronies.
    It was never “This is my husband, the cop,” or “...my husband, Lieutenant Mick Callahan of the Chicago PD,” but always “This is my husband, who’s in law enforcement and a student of military history.”
    The instant the Simon woman had said those same words, he’d felt the old and all-too-familiar tic of anger that he used to experience with Julie. When had his being a cop turned into an embarrassment for her? It had been good enough to put her through med school, hadn’t it? When had she stopped loving him?
    Why the hell was he thinking about her now? Jesus. Julie was usually banished to those wee, small, inebriated hours of the morning when no amount of liquor could drown the memories, good and bad alike.
    Mick shook his head to clear it of the intrusive thoughts, and then swallowed hard to get rid of the sudden, unexpected tightness in his throat. He continued down the stairs, and by the time he got outside, Shelby Simon was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, flanked by his neighbors, Hattie Grimes and Lena Slotnik.
    The two of them were like day and night—literally. Round little Hattie’s skin was dark mahogany and she dressed in large, long, and darkly exotic dashikis that she ran up on her ancient Singer sewing machine. Long, tall Lena’s skin, in contrast, was white as the snows of her native Vladivostok, and she always wore blue—dresses, slacks, whatever—along with some kind of sweater or wrap, even during the hottest days of summer.
    They had met about a hundred years ago when they worked as lunch ladies in the cafeteria at Lawndale High. After retirement they’d apparently struck some sort of pact to serve and protect each other in their sunset years.
    In his two years in residence here, Mick had never seen one without the other. Hattie and Lena were inseparable, joined at their mismatched hips, black and white Siamese twins who pulled their shopping carts to and from the market together every Monday and Thursday, who went to Mass at Saint Jerome’s every day and played Bingo there every Tuesday night, and who seemed to consider their downstairs neighbor a soul-in-jeopardy, someone in desperate need of their prayers.
    Hell. He probably was, but what he didn’t need right now was for Hattie and Lena to delay his mission of getting Shelby Simon quickly and safely out of town.
    “Ladies,” he said, approaching the little triad on the sidewalk.
    Hattie wrapped her fleshy arms around him. “Let me hug you, sweet boy. Let Hattie hug