So About the Money by Cathy Perkins Read Free Book Online Page A

knuckle under her eyes. “I thought I was all cried out.”
    “That takes a while.” Laurie pulled tissues from her pocket and handed her one.
    They wiped their eyes and blew their noses. Without making a conscious decision, they strolled toward the paved walking path.
    Laurie scuffed through the fallen leaves. “You didn’t have to drive over here. I could’ve come by your house.”
    Holly threaded an arm through Laurie’s. “You had to work and I needed to get out of the house. Being alone with my thoughts was driving me nuts.”
    “Some cops in the ER were talking about Marcy. I swear, news ran through the hospital faster than the flu.” Laurie worked on the hospital’s administrative side and heard every rumor swirling around the medical center.
    “Big surprise the cops were gossiping,” Holly muttered.
    Within minutes, they left Howard Amon Park. Movement gave Holly’s restless, mixed-up emotions an outlet. Slowly, her shoulders loosened and her stomach unclenched.
    The path followed the riverbank to another unnamed pocket park where a couple played with a toddler in the heaps of leaves. Holly smiled at the innocent happiness.
    Laurie broke the silence. “I can’t believe it. Marcy. Dead. It doesn’t make sense.”
    And the day’s disasters crashed back over Holly.
    “Having to answer nine thousand questions about Marcy and my alleged involvement made it way too real.”
    “What?” Shock mingled with outrage in Laurie’s tone.
    “Yeah, I’m a Person of Interest.”
    Laurie sputtered, but Holly said, “All those cops out at the game management area, most of them were just doing their job. I get that. I mean, it did piss me off they obviously suspected Alex and me, but mostly they were polite. Professional. But I swear, they all asked the same questions. I seriously wanted to ask, don’t you people talk to each other?”
    “Maybe you should’ve busted out and used sign language.” Laurie waved her hands in a lousy imitation of the hello gesture.
    “Maybe if I’d used sign language in the first place, they’d have let me go home sooner.” Holly grimaced. “The question that keeps running through my head is why? Marcy was so nice, and in so many ways, she’s just like us. She had a job, a family. She paid her bills. Went to church on Sunday.”
    “I can’t imagine her mixed up in anything that could turn around and get her murdered.”
    “Do you think she stumbled into something? I saw this Aryan Nation guy out there who scared the crap out of me. The skinheads and the Mexican bandits grow dope around here. Maybe Marcy wandered into one of their ‘grows’ and they shot her.”  
    “Did you see any plants or signs someone was camping out?”
    “There was a lot of trash—food wrappers and stuff—where we found her.”
    Laurie shook her head. “That’s probably where people were fishing and too lazy to pack their trash out. And you know as well as I do that Marcy wouldn’t have been poking around out there.”
    “I’m running out of possibilities. Could it have been someone else who screwed up? Someone she was involved with?”  
    Instead of brushing off the comment, Laurie pursed her lips, clearly thinking about it. “Marcy never talked about guys—anybody she was dating or guys in general. That’s not normal. Women talk about their men.”
    Holly sidestepped the piles of poop the park geese had left on the paved path. The geese had ignored them when they didn’t offer food. “That always bothered me, too. Friends talk about their love lives. Or complain about the lack of one.”  
    “I hate saying anything bad about Marcy, but it always felt like she was hiding something.”
    Holly gave Laurie an incredulous look. “We all have things we don’t want to talk about. It doesn’t mean she was doing anything wrong.”
    “I didn’t say that. It’s just, at times, I wondered if she was seeing a married man.”
    Her mouth fell open and she sputtered, “Really? Why’d