Roses Are Dead by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online

nothing more she sat down opposite him, resting her purse on her lap. She was twenty-three but looked much older, her face anorexic-looking with the bones prominent and her eyes large and bright as from fever. She wore her auburn hair short and combed behind ears with amber buttons in the lobes. Her dress was a plain brown shift through which the straps of her white brassiere showed. She dug a cigarette out of her purse and let it droop from the center of her mouth with her thumb poised on the wheel of a disposable butane lighter.
    â€œYou didn’t give me your name,” she said, and lit it.
    â€œYou’re Louis Konigsberg’s daughter.”
    â€œYes.” She blew smoke away from the table. “I had my name legally changed. I was going to be an actress for a while. Now I make recordings for the telephone company. When you call for the time? That’s me.” She closed her mouth before she could run on further. The man’s tired-looking eyes seemed to see through her skull. She wondered if he was a policeman.
    â€œKlegg said you had a problem. He didn’t tell me what it was.”
    She puffed at the cigarette, flipped ash into the tin tray on the table, puffed again. She never inhaled. “Can I get a drink? Whiskey sour.”
    He went on looking at her, then got up and walked over to the bar, rapping a knuckle on the top to wake the bartender. He returned carrying only one glass, which he set in front of her.
    â€œAren’t you drinking?”
    â€œNot when I’m working.”
    He was a policeman. She sipped her whiskey and set it down. “I don’t see how you can help me. The other police said there was nothing they could do until Roy committed a crime.”
    â€œWho’s Roy?”
    â€œHe was my boyfriend. He thinks he still is, that’s the problem.” She looked around at the empty tables. “I don’t see how this place stays in business.”
    â€œThe shift at the assembly plant doesn’t change for two more hours. Then the place is jammed. That’s why I picked this time. What’s Roy’s last name?”
    â€œBlossom. We—made some films together in Detroit two years ago, before I found out I wasn’t going to cost Faye Dunaway any sleep. We saw each other off the set. He was good-looking, about twenty-five, tall and blond and fantastic in bed. The joke around the studio was that when the lights went up so did he.” She got a sour smile on her face. It wasn’t returned. She sent some more ash at the tray. “Then he got arrested.”
    â€œPornography?”
    â€œMurder. He got in an argument with a man in a parking lot over a scratched fender and cut him up with a pocketknife.”
    â€œWhat’d he get?”
    â€œThe jury found him innocent by reason of insanity and he went to the forensic psychiatry center at Ypsilanti for sixteen months. They let him out five weeks ago. He called me the day he got out. He’s called almost every day since.
    â€œI told him I didn’t want anything more to do with him. I said I had a good job and I was happy with my life and I didn’t want to go back. I told him it had nothing to do with what he did. It did, of course, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.”
    â€œHe didn’t take it well.”
    She looked at him quickly. His expression hadn’t changed. “He said I’d be sorry.”
    â€œHe say how?”
    â€œHe’s too smart for that. He calls me at all hours. I changed my number to an unlisted one, but he found it out somehow. I’m afraid to answer the phone. But the ringing and ringing is almost as bad as listening to him. He never says anything specific, just talks about what he’s been doing and how he thinks about me all the time. Hell, I can’t even get him for making obscene calls. If they were they wouldn’t be so bad. It’s what he doesn’t say. Then last Monday I saw