Mystery by Jonathan Kellerman Read Free Book Online Page B

sentence. I’m working against a bit of a deadline.” A sharp, white knuckle rapped the side of the tank. “Pun intended.”
    I said, “No, I don’t do it for everyone.”
    She clapped her hands. “So I yam special!”
    Where the room wasn’t snowed by toys it was bland furniture, generic rugs, floral prints on the walls where crayon drawings weren’t taped. Drawn drapes turned the space a gray one shade darker than Gretchen’s complexion.
    “Chad’s artistic,” she said. “Smart, too, I lucked out in the sperm department. They used to use med students as donors, now, who knows? All I learned about my personal masturbator is that he’s of English-German descent, taller than average, and free of genetic diseases. For the first year I kept imagining him—different hims, actually, the images started flipping like cards. What I ended up with was Brad Pitt mixed with Albert Einstein. Then Chad started talking and became a real person and it was just the two of us, I stopped thinking about my silent partner.”
    She scanned a couple of drawings. “What do you think of Chad’s artwork? I’ll put money you don’t find anything neurotic or psychotic in them.”
    The drawings were age-appropriate for a six-year-old boy. Many bore Mommy I love you s.
    “Brilliant, huh?” said Gretchen.
    “Excellent.”
    “We started with crayons, then he was too good for crayons so I got him these incredible pencils from Japan. That’s what he used on that peacock—over in the corner. Go look.”
    Searching for that drawing put her kitchenette in view. Cans of spaghetti, boxes of cookies, bags of chips. The refrigerator was veneered with photos of her and a round-faced, dark-haired boy. In the early ones, Gretchen still looked like Gretchen.
    The peacock battled with a dinosaur. From the blood and the feathers, score one for the reptile team.
    “Vivid,” I said.
    “You messed up your line. You were supposed to say, What an excellent mom you are, Gretchen, to produce the next Michelangelo .”
    “You’re doing great as a mom, Gretch—”
    “Because it’s all about me me me ,” she said. “I’m a me-ist, that’s always been my diagnosis. ‘Narcissistic personality disorder with histrionic elements.’ Oh, yeah, ‘exacerbated by substance abuse.’ You agree?”
    “I’m not here to diagnose you.”
    “That’s what the shrink my defense team hired said I was. Narcissistic and a junkie. The key was to make me look intensely screwed up so I could avoid responsibility. I wasn’t supposed to read the report but I insisted they show it to me because I was paying for it. It makes sense to you?”
    “Legally, it was yours—”
    “Not that,” she said. “What the turkey wrote about me. ‘Narcissism, histrionic, dope.’ That fit your diagnosis?”
    “Let’s talk about Chad.”
    Her eyes fluttered. She fiddled with the air hose. “Just tell me this: How narcissistic am I if I devote the last six years of my life to my child? How histrionic am I if I never show him anything but a calm, happy face? How big of a dope fiend am I if I’ve been clean and sober for seven fucking years?”
    “Good point.”
    “But I’m stuck with that damn diagnosis. In my head—like that bastard passed a sentence on me. Like it’s my eye color and I’m stuck with it.”
    She cleared her throat, coughed, swooned, adjusted a valve on the air tank. “I wanted to kill that shrink. Judging me. Now I’d be happy if what he put down was my only diagnosis.”
    I nodded.
    “Yeah, yeah, up and down goes the head,” she said. “Been to a lot of you guys, my parents didn’t give up on me till I was fourteen. I have to tell you, most of your colleagues were losers. So how could I respect their opinions? Know why I picked you? It wasn’t because I remembered you from when your gay buddy hassled me. I mean I did remember, but that wasn’t the point. Know what it was?”
    “Not a clue.”
    “A woman I used to do yoga with, one of the few