P is for Peril by Sue Grafton Read Free Book Online

top-heavy with a coquettish cap of red hair dyed the color of Florida oranges. As usual, she was wearing a muu-muu, this one a gaudy jungle of orange and gold, the skirt lifting, sail-like, against the rising wind. She brightened when she saw me. “Kinsey, is good. Here’s for Henry,” she said, opening the bag for me.
    I peered at the contents, half-expecting to see kittens. “What is that? Is that trash?”
    Rosie shifted her weight from one foot to the other, refusing to make eye contact, a strategy she employs when she’s guilty, ill at ease, or maneuvering like crazy. “Is my sister Klotilde’s medical bills for hospital and after she died. Henry’s going to explain. I can’t make into heads or tails with this.” Rosie’s perfectly capable of speaking grammatically. She only butchers vocabulary and syntax when she’s trying to seem helpless, thus conning you into doing her some outrageous favor. This is especially true when she’s dealing with her state and federal taxes, which Henry’s done without a murmur for the past six years. Now slyly, she said, “You gonna help I hope. He shouldn’t do by himself. Is not fair.”
    â€œWhy can’t William pitch in?”
    â€œKlotilde preferred Henry.”
    â€œBut she’s deceased, ” I said.
    â€œBefore she deceased herself, she preferred,” she said, smiling coyly, as though that cinched it.
    I dropped the argument. It was really up to Henry, though it irritated me intensely that she’d take advantage of him. The Klotilde in question was Rosie’s cranky older sister. I’d never been able to pronounce her Hungarian surname, which abounded in consonants and strange punctuation marks. She’d suffered for years from an unspecified degenerative disease. She’d used a wheelchair since she was in her fifties, plagued by a variety of other ailments that necessitated copious medications and numerous hospital stays. Finally, in her seventies, she’d been advised to undergo hip-replacement surgery. This was in April, some seven months back. Though the surgery had been successful, Klotilde had been outraged by the rigors of convalescence. She’d resisted all attempts to get her on her feet, balked at nourishment, refused to use a bedpan, pulled out catheters and feeding tubes, flung her pills at the nurses, and sabotaged her physical therapy. After the customary five days in the hospital, she was moved to a nursing home where, over the course of the next several weeks, she began to decline. She’d finally succumbed to pneumonia, dysphagia, malnutrition, and kidney failure. Rosie had not been exactly stricken when she “passed.” “She should have pessed along time ago,” said she. “She’s a pain in the patooty. That’s what happens when you don’t behave. She should have done what doctor say. She shouldn’t never resist help when he know best. Now I got this and I don’t know what to do with. Here you take.”
    Judging from the weight and heft of the bag, she’d gotten into some resistance of her own, letting all the paperwork pile up. It’d take Henry weeks to get everything sorted out. He emerged from the backdoor and crossed the patio to us. He’d changed out of his tank top and shorts into a flannel shirt and long pants.
    â€œI gotta scoot,” I said, and set the bag on the ground.
    Henry peered in. “Is this trash?”
    By the time I let myself into my apartment, he was already hauling the bag toward his kitchen door, nodding sympathetically while Rosie lurched through an tortured explanation of her plight.
    I dropped my shoulder bag on a kitchen stool while I circled the apartment, closing windows and locking them. I turned on lamps as I went so the place would look cheerful when I got home. Upstairs, I pulled on a clean white turtleneck, which I wore with my jeans. I shrugged back into my gray