Smoke by Lisa Unger Read Free Book Online Page A

card. “Here you go.”
    “Thanks,” said Matt, shaking his hand.
    B ack in the car, both of them sat for a minute in silence, parked illegally by St. Patrick’s on Fifty-First Street. Fifth Avenue was a thick, noisy river of cars and the sky was still threatening snow. New Yorkers walked briskly carrying bags from Saks and Bendel, Tiffany, or briefcases, or backpacks. Tourists walked slowly, their eyes inevitably cast upward toward the tops of buildings, pausing to gawk at the cathedral. In a few more weeks, when the tree was up at Rockefeller Plaza, it would be nearly impossible to walk down the street in this neighborhood.Jesamyn reminded herself, as she did every year, to get her shopping for Benji done early. But she never did.
    “Now what?” said Matt, looking dejected.
    “I don’t know, Mount. Maybe we have to face facts. If we’d had this video a week and a half ago, there wouldn’t even have been much of an investigation.”
    She, for one, felt a little lighter for having seen the tape. For the past two weeks, Lily Samuels was never far from her thoughts, invading her dreams. She’d imagined in detail all the thousand things that might have happened to her: stranger abduction, murder, suicide, or accident—all the myriad nightmarish things that happen to people every day. The possibility that she’d just taken her money and driven off somewhere for some time alone or maybe to make a fresh start on her life … well, it was a relief to Jesamyn.
    “Maybe she walked away from her life,” she said. “Maybe temporarily. Maybe not.”
    Mount just shook his head like he couldn’t accept it. “It doesn’t feel right.”
    He started the engine and rolled into traffic.
    “Where are we going?” she asked, though she didn’t really have to.
    “Riverdale. I want to talk to the people Lily talked to.”
    At first she’d been “the vic,” toward the end of the first week she was “Samuels,” now she was “Lily.” He was always lecturing Jesamyn about getting too involved, too personally invested in the outcome of a case. And here he was. She knew a schoolboy crush when she saw one.
    “Mount—,” she started. He raised a hand.
    “Humor me this one time will ya’, Jez,” he said a little testily. “We go up there, ask a few questions. If there’s nothing, we’re back in front of the captain by noon. We’ll tell him we’re ready to declare her voluntary missing.”
    “Okay, okay,” she said, raising her palms. “Let’s go to Riverdale.”

Four
    L ydia sat on the edge of the bed with the phone to her ear, zoning out as it rang. She’d noticed recently that it took her grandparents longer to get to the phone than it used to. Sometimes it rang five or six times before one of them picked it up. If anyone picked it up at all. They didn’t have an answering machine, though Lydia had purchased one for them as a Christmas gift a couple of years ago.
    “It’s a trick,” said her grandfather. “A way for the phone company to make more money.”
    “How’s that, Grandpa?” she’d asked.
    “If people call and I don’t pick up, they know I’m not home, they don’t get charged. If it’s important, they’ll call back. If a machine answers, they get charged for the call. And I get charged when I call them back. They get to charge for two calls instead of just one.”
    Lydia had laughed. She had to give it to him; he was right.
    “Oh, David. Join the living, will you?” said her grandmother. “All my life, this Depression Era thinking. It’s—well, it’s depressing . Hook up the machine.”
    Lydia was thinking it was a battle that her grandmother had apparently lost or given up on as she listened to the fifth ring. She was about to hang up when she heard her grandfather’s voice.
    “Hey, Grandpa,” she said.
    “What’s up, kid?”
    She could see his silver hair, his broad shoulders and ruddy skin. She knew he was probably wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, probably Rockports or