Mummers' Curse by Gillian Roberts Read Free Book Online

frame suits as mobile outhouses.”
    The idea was disgusting, but then, so was the gigantic urinal tent on Washington Avenue, and Lord knew where females went when nature called.
    Mackenzie had an eloquent, continental shrug that expressed infinite weariness with the world’s evil potential. This time it probably also encompassed the idea of men disappearing into the pleats and panels of frame suits.
    “Wouldn’t Jimmy Pat have shouted? I mean, being shot…”
    “Shot several times, in fact, but who’d hear? Who’d know it wasn’t a normal feelin’-good expression? Also, Jimmy Pat might have been so tanked he didn’t feel the bullet, or he could have gone into shock, or at least not understood what was happenin’, until it was too late.”
    “Then what are you going to do?”
    He finished off his mulled wine. “We need a whole lot of forensics, like calculations of how fast or slow that kind of bleed would go given the temperature, the fact that the victim was in motion, and some kind of reconstruction of how fast or slow the brigade was moving. Blood alcohol level. Wind-chill factor. We need to check the street for blood, but how many people strutted over wherever he bled, and now, this snow is not helping. And then what I’m goin’ to do is pray for a miracle. If anybody saw it happen, why didn’t they make a fuss? And if nobody saw it happen, then what?”
    “Surely somebody saw it happen, but they didn’t know they were seeing it happen.”
    “If a person sees a crime in a forest, but doesn’t know he’s seeing a crime, did he see it?”
    “What is the sound of one homicide detective being snotty?”
    He yawned, and I felt a twinge of compassion. He was tired, disappointed, and frustrated at the prospect of a difficult, if not impossible, investigation.
    He sank into the downy softness of our most recent extravagance, a sofa made of leather so butter-soft and palely glowing, I was sure it had been the hide of something gentle and mythical, most likely a unicorn. I hoped it had died of old age.
    “Ahhh,” he said. “Quiet at last. It hurts to listen to that many people. I must have gotten five hundred names. Not that anybody had much to say, except how horrible this all was and that they didn’t know what the hell happened and they were royally freaked out.”
    “I met somebody named Quentin who’d love listening to their traumas.”
    He rolled his eyes. “You going to tell me his history, too?”
    “Hers. And the only part I know is that her parents really, really wanted a boy.”
    “Wouldn’t anyone’s?”
    I sat down next to him, the better to throttle him. “You’re so easy,” he murmured. “Any time I want to see a cute knee jerk…”
    “I was thinking…”
    He sat up straighter. His hair seemed to uncurl and go on alert. Despite his avowed preference for “smart women,” they sometimes frightened him. Or at least I did.
    “It’s a brand new year,” he said. “Surely Philadelphians have more than Mummers by way of tradition. Don’t you folk make resolutions? How about you make a serious one to—”
    “Stop thinking?”
    “Stop thinkin’ about what you’re thinkin’ about, which is what I’m supposed to think about an’ concentrate instead on thinkin’ about what you’re supposed to be thinkin’ about.”
    “If I could follow you, I’d try. But all I meant was that I know some of the people involved, so could I help you?”
    “Sure. I’d like you to tell me whatever you know, just the way you did about Jimmy Pat. But if you mean could we job-share, then the answer is no. Adamantly. Definitely. Absolutely.”
    “Get off the fence, Mackenzie. You want me as a partner or not?”
    He had the grace to grin.
    “So, then,” I said. “Don’t you think I could—”
    “I think you, or somebody, could make dinner.”
    “Dinner?”
    “You remember. Food. The stuff that gets rid of that yawningly empty sensation. This somebody doesn’t have the energy to cook