Unhinged by Sarah Graves Read Free Book Online Page B

stars.” He cuffed her sturdy shoulder as she appeared in the doorway behind him.
    With wisps of dark hair escaping her thick braid and her costume as usual a medley of denim, flannel, and double-knit, Maggie seemed the opposite of the polished, blade-slim Fran Hanson. “Kid takes an astronomy course and all of a sudden she’s Bosco Diorama,” Sam added teasingly.
    Maggie cuffed him back. “That’s Vasco da Gama, you booby.” Sam had a disorder that had turned out to be different from and worse than dyslexia. He played it for laughs, mostly.
    “I only took astronomy,” she said, “so I could bail you out when
you
got in trouble writing the term paper, and . . .”
    She stopped, went on in another tone. Besides hours when she did little but help Sam with schoolwork, she played endless games of Scrabble and anagrams with him, to help him develop his verbal dexterity.
    “Anyway. You owe me a moonlight sail,” she finished.
    I disliked seeing her treat him so tactfully; she never used to. It let me know she sensed the ambivalence of his feelings for her. But my son didn’t seem to notice.
    “Yeah, yeah,” he replied cheerfully. “Hey, it’s past nineteen hundred hours, we want to get going.” Whereupon they went out to try to get Sam’s car started; I kept insisting he needed a newer one but he was about as quick to spend money as he was to pursue romance. Fortunately the trip to the boat basin was a steep downhill ride.
    Back in the dining room I found the pudding and cream eaten, George’s blackberry liqueur bottle nearly emptied, and the party ending. But Harry Markle couldn’t get Prill’s muzzle off his knee.
    “Looks like
somebody’s
fallen in love,” Ellie observed with a glance at me; I’d confided to her my worries about Sam.
    Prill sighed, gazing soulfully up at Harry. “Did you have pets in the city?” I asked him, pouring the last of the liqueur into my coffee. What the heck, I was already going to have the mother of all headaches in the morning.
    Harry shook his head, fondling Prill’s ear. “Wanted to. But in an apartment . . .”
    He raised his free hand, let it fall. “Too hard on the pet. Besides, with my schedule I didn’t think I could take the right care of one.”
    “What schedule would that be?” Roy McCall asked, just making conversation. Beside him, Evert continued to snore softly.
    “I was a cop. NYPD, downtown,” Harry replied pleasantly. But not in a way that encouraged further questions about this work.
    “Oh, then you must know all my old haunts,” I said. “Ciro’s, on Lombardy Street? And Dorian’s Grill?” In the city I’d gotten in the habit of checking stories. My clients would lie to me about the silliest things, to save face or to keep me from being able to testify about their businesses, later.
    Or they would until they got to know me. Harry Markle waded right in. “Yeah. Good old Ciro’s. I know Dorian’s too, but it wasn’t my kind of place.”
    Harry rose. Prill, too; stubby tail wagging, her head tipped eagerly as if to say, “Let’s go, boss!”
    Harry looked at her, trying to decide whether or not to say something. “You found her?” was what he finally came out with.
    “Yes, Harry,” I said. “And we’re stuck with you, aren’t we, Prill? Unless,” I went on slowly, “you want her? She does eat a lot and she needs plenty of exercise,” I added hastily.
    It would be awful if he took Prill, then broke her heart by not keeping her. “A dog like this, you have to really be sure . . .”
    “I’m sure,” he said. “I’d meant to get a dog as soon as—”
    Suddenly I knew I couldn’t have found Prill a better home if I’d designed it for her myself. I doubted she would ever let him out of her sight from now on, she was so smitten with him.
    Even though he was, as I had just determined, a stone liar. “Come on,” he told her, “let’s get you settled in for the night.”
    “Wha’?” said Wyatt Evert, raising his head from