Web of Angels by Lilian Nattel Read Free Book Online Page A

with?”
    “Remington rifle for deer, shotgun for birds.” She laughed. “I never imagined that a mother of three, here in granola land, would have any interest in hunting.”
    “Yeah. Well. You don’t know someone till you do.”
    Ingrid took a deep drag on her cigarette, then flicked it into the yard, lighting another. “It was my gun. The kid appropriated it. But it was mine.”
    She stood under the porch light, sucking down the nicotine as fast as she could get it into her lungs.
    “Feels like you did it?” he asked.
    “If we hadn’t rented the house … But our apartment was too small for the dogs.”
    He looked over the yard. His eyes were used to making out shapes in the darkness, discriminating between monsters and, say, that ash tree or the tarp thrown over Eleanor’s gas barbecue. “She was the one who took it. And the one who used it.”
    “But I was right next door and didn’t give any thought to my gun cabinet except to make sure it met the legal requirements. Anyone could have broken in. I’d just got back from the observatory. I didn’t want to wake up Amy, so I went upstairs to my office.” She glanced at him. “You live that close to someone’s house, you hear things. It can’t be avoided.” She moved her hand as if to stub out the cigarette and say something else, but instead she took another drag, smoking it down to the filter. The backyard faced the railroad tracks a block north, but the track was hidden by trees. “Whatever. There are too many houses jammed together. I don’t know how people can breathe.”
    “I like it out here. It’s quiet. Bet it’s a lot quieter when you go hunting.”
    “Deer and moose season aren’t till fall. But turkey’s coming up. Can you shoot?”
    He was actually a very good shot. But he was here to protect the life, not live it. Everyone inside had to make things look normal. And Sharon hated guns. “I haven’t for a long time,” he said.
    Ingrid was taking a pen from her pocket, writing on ascrap of paper. “I’ve really got to go home and let the dogs out. Here’s my e-mail address. If you want to come with me to the shooting range, let me know.”
    Alec shoved the piece of paper in his pocket. What else could he do with it? Someone like him didn’t have friends. He did his job. That was all.

CHAPTER
SIX
    A lec parked the minivan in front of Rick and Debra’s house, wheels on the sidewalk, hazard lights blinking. Then he stacked the cartons and carried them, two at a time, to the porch before ringing the bell.
    “Hi Mrs. Lewis,” Cathy said as she opened the front door.
    “I’ve got some stuff here for you,” Alec said. “Did Eleanor phone about it?”
    “Oh. We haven’t been answering the phone. Mom!” Cathy called over her shoulder. “Mrs. Lewis is here.” Her parents had raised her with an old-fashioned politeness: never call adults by their first names and other rules that she generally obeyed and her sister had not.
    “Tell her to come in.”
    “No thanks,” Alec said. “I’d better …”
    But Cathy’s mom was at the door, looking with bewilderment at the cartons on her porch as if she didn’t know what to do with them.
    “I’ll just bring these in then, okay?” he asked. “Kitchen?”
    “Yes. Please,” Debra said—always Debra, never Debbie or Deb, and in her pediatric office, Dr. Dawson. She looked like her daughters, both of them, the one who’d survived and the one who was gone, slender and blonde, though Heather had countered the resemblance by chopping her hair short, sometimes wearing clothes that swallowed her up, leaving her formless, or at other times showing everything she could legally show. Debra dressed tastefully even in grief. As she often told her daughters, People who do well, do well. She worked here in the neighbourhood, her practice on Hammond Street above Magee’s. Parents felt reassured by her assuredness, for she always ordered lots of tests, and they’d heard that in an