Roughstock (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) by Laura Crum Read Free Book Online Page A

an emotional pulp at this point. Not an appealing prospect.
    But one I needed to deal with, for reasons of curiosity as well as altruism. I wanted to ask Joanna some questions.

 
    SIX
    An hour later I was knocking on the door of her room, having showered, dressed, walked Blue, and promised Lonny I'd go skiing with him in the afternoon if the weather cleared. At the moment, it was showing no signs of doing that. Stormy blasts bent the pine boughs outside the windows, and the lake was hidden by a blur of whirling white.
    Joanna answered her door wearing the same terry cloth robe she'd been wearing when I left her yesterday. Her hair didn't look as if she'd combed it since then, and her eyes were puffy. She turned without a word and walked back into the room.
    Shutting the door behind myself, I followed her and sat down in a chair. Joanna was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out the window at the blowing snow. I had a feeling she'd been sitting like that for hours, maybe all night. I was trying to decide what to say to her when she spoke.
    "I called Todd last night." Her voice was barely audible.
    "So what did he have to say?" I tried to keep the what-in-hell-did-you-do-that-for out of my voice.
    "Nothing. I told him what was happening to me up here and he basically said that's too bad, honey, and hung up."
    I waited, hoping she'd say more.
    She raised her eyes from the floor to my face and in the brief turn of her head I saw the pure Swedish structure of her cheekbones, undiminished despite the swollen eyes and tangled hair.
    "Some girl answered the phone," she said. "I called Todd, at the apartment where he's living, and this girl answered like it was her place. He's already moved in with someone else."
    Slow tears had started to roll down her face as she spoke. Unlike the noisy sobbing of yesterday, this was entirely silent. Simply tears running from her eyes.
    I didn't know what to do. Perhaps I should have gone to her and held her, but between the estrangement I felt and my own awkwardness, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Any impulse I might have had to offer more advice and platitudes died at the sight of such abject misery.
    After a minute she said, "I know you were right, yesterday. I've got to get over him. It's just hard to do." Her wet eyes shifted to the blowing snow outside the window. "I'm sorry I was such an idiot, Gail. I didn't want to hear it-that I ought to give Todd up. He's the only man I've ever loved, the only one I ever wanted. And now he's gone."
    "I'm sorry."
    We sat in silence while Joanna watched the snow and I watched her. Hardhearted though it sounds, I was wondering how to bring up the topic of Jack and his murder. I was genuinely sorry for Joanna, but it didn't change the fact that someone had killed Jack and she was still a suspect.
    She didn't seem aware of this, or rather, as I'd told the detective, she didn't seem to care. Her misery over Todd Texiera had engulfed her to such a degree that I doubted if she cared much whether she was arrested or not.
    "Joanna," I said finally, "I don't want you to be arrested for murder. I feel like it's my fault."
    She smiled at me through her tears, and for a second I had a glimpse of the old Joanna, the one I'd lived with in college-spunky, intense, stubborn-a woman with a will to survive. More than that, to triumph.
    "It's not your fault. I wanted to be introduced to the man. You didn't force me to date him. And you didn't have anything to do with his getting shot. Neither did I.” Her tears seemed to be abating. "And I don't think I'm going to be arrested. Not immediately, anyway."
    "That's good. What makes you think so?"
    "That detective was here last night. After you left. He asked me questions-the same old ones-for hours and hours. But at the end he said I was free to go home tomorrow after the seminar ended. All he said was that I needed to let them know if I left Merced."
    So Joanna wasn't a candidate for immediate arrest. I wondered what