"V" is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton Read Free Book Online Page B

conversation went on for a bit while I held up my skinned palm, the butt of which was scored with skid marks. He peered at it closely and made a face. Still chatting, he tossed the plane ticket on the counter, opened a drawer, and took out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a box of cotton balls.
    When his conversation ended, he returned the handset to the wall-mounted cradle and motioned me into a chair. “How’d you do this?”
    I said, “Long story,” and then regaled him with a condensed version of the shoplifting incident and my attempt to pick up an ID on the younger woman. “You should see my shin,” I said. “It looks like somebody hit me with a tire iron. Weird thing is I don’t even know how it happened. One minute she was steering straight for me. Next instant I’d levitated, getting out of her way.”
    â€œI can’t believe you went after her. What were you going to do, make a citizen’s arrest?”
    â€œI hadn’t thought that far ahead. I was hoping to pick up her plate number, but no such luck,” I said. “What’s going on? It sounds like you’re taking a trip.”
    â€œI’m flying to Detroit. Nell took a spill. Lewis called first thing this morning and woke me out of a sound sleep.”
    â€œShe fell? That’s not like her. She’s usually steady as a rock.”
    He saturated a cotton ball with peroxide and dabbed my wound. A light foam bubbled on the edge of the scrape. The wound no longer hurt, but there was something lovely about being tended to by a bona fide mother substitute. He frowned. “She was opening a can of tuna and the cat was winding back and forth between her legs. You know how they do. She went to set his bowl on the floor, tumbled over him, and came down on her hip. Lewis said it sounded like a well-struck baseball flying out of the park. She tried to pull herself up but the pain was excruciating, so the boys called 9-1-1. She went from the ER straight into surgery, which is when he called me. I contacted my travel agent as soon as the office opened and she got me a seat on the first flight out.”
    â€œWhat cat? I didn’t know they had a cat.”
    â€œI thought I told you about him. Charlie took in a stray a month ago. Skin and bones from all reports, no tail, and half of one ear gone. Lewis was adamant about turning the scruffy guy over to the pound, but Charlie and Nell ganged up and voted him down. Lewis made his usual dire predictions—mange, cat scratch fever, septicemia, ringworm—and sure enough, this morning ‘tragedy struck,’ as he put it. Most of his report was taken up with I-told-you-so’s.” He returned the first-aid items to the drawer.
    â€œBut Nell’s okay?”
    Henry wagged his hand. “Lewis says they put a fourteen-inch titanium pin in her femur and I don’t know what else. It was tough to keep him on point. I gather she’ll be in the hospital for a few days and then go to rehab.”
    â€œWell, the poor thing.”
    Henry’s sister, Nell, was ninety-nine years old and ordinarily the picture of health, not only active but vigorous. The only other hospitalization I’d heard about was nineteen years before, when she’d developed “female trouble” and had undergone a hysterectomy. Afterward she’d declared that while at eighty she was fully reconciled to the notion that her childbearing days were done, she was sorry to lose the organ. She’d never had a body part removed and she’d been hoping to leave the world with all her original equipment intact. Nell had never married and had no children of her own. Her four younger brothers had served as surrogates, aggravating the life out of her as kids are meant to do. Henry, as the youngest, was more closely allied with Nell than any of the intervening sibs. The two of them were like bookends, holding the three middle brothers upright. After Nell,