Working Murder by Eleanor Boylan Read Free Book Online Page A

them to stay. Hen
     was getting restless, so they took off. When Tully got back—he just told me this—he took
     May out to dinner and had a long imploring talk with her of the kind I had planned—”
    â€œSo May was alone for better than an hour.”
    â€œBy golly, so she was!” When Sadd gets sarcastic, he tends to overdo it. “Completely
     alone and unprotected! And whoever came in during that convenient hour and forced her
     own prescription stuff down her throat—”
    â€œOh, for heaven's sake let me get some rest.” I turned over and closed my eyes. “And
     you'd better do the same or you know what's going to happen; you're going to fall asleep
     at that wake tonight.”
    â€œI sincerely hope so,” said Sadd and went off. Scrabble ... Mah-Jongg ... Pinochle ... So
     many ways to kill people. You can wait and watch, then appear suddenly from across the
     years or across the street, and you can bully or blackmail or threaten or lament, and
     you can leave, as guilty of someone's self-destruction as if you had slain her where she
     stood. It would be murder, murder that worked , just as Ellen's murder, if there
     had been one, had worked for fifty years ... fifty years ... fifty years...
    I realized dimly, joyfully, that I was falling asleep. Could it really be possible?—that
     lovely lifting, swimming, floating.... Was I actually to have a priceless interlude of
     nothingness? Even my feet, cold since my arrival, were warm.... Maybe I'm dying, I
     thought lazily. But warm feet ? This was heaven in advance. I moved them and the
     warmth shifted and meowed. Loki! Oh, darling cat, you found me! I'd reach down and
     stroke you but I'm gone ... I'm really gone....
    The door opened.
    â€œGran, why do monkeys wear green suspenders to bed?”
7
    I LOVED THE KITCHEN OF THIS HOUSE, AN OBLONG room in the center of which Tina had put an
     old refectory table and wooden chairs. She and Henry had “modernized” (a word Sadd
     refuses to use) only to the extent of the appliances; big windows and old-fashioned
     cabinets remained. The pantry housed a small black-and-white television to which Hen was
     allowed to repair, providing the volume was kept down to candle power.
    He sat there now on a stool, and beside him sat Loki, who made an occasional decrepit
     pass at Hen's pizza and was rewarded with tendrils of cheese. The rest of us sat at the
     table munching our own delectable slices, conscious that Tully's presence made us less
     comfortable than we'd been with just each other. He talked incessantly, devouring the
     pizza, his thin legs crossed and sliding around on the wooden seat of his chair.
    â€œThank heaven I'm out of May's apartment. I'd have gone batty before long what with the
     police and the coroner and calls from other people in the place.”
    Henry said: “You saved us all that, Tully.”
    â€œGlad I could. Your wife's call was the only nice one. You certainly married a mighty
     kind little lady, Henry.” Managing to sound both courtly and corny, Tully beamed at
     Tina.
    So he hadn't just shown up: Tina had invited him. Typical.
    She said quickly: “I'm glad you could get a cab in this weather.”
    â€œIt wasn't too bad in Manhattan. You caught it worse here. Is there any more of that
     great coffee? Actually, I love the snow. I guess I'm just a confirmed old Yankee. I
     brought an extra vest for you, Sadd. A wool one.”
    â€œThank you. It should fit fine,” said Sadd. “Not more than twenty pounds difference
     between us. I'll wear it with Henry Gamadge's overcoat and be the fashion plate of the
     wake tonight.”
    â€œSpeaking of tonight”—Henry was pouring coffee all around—"let me make a little speech:
     We five are in a rather unique position—”
    â€œYou don't qualify ‘unique,'” said Sadd. “You can't be ‘rather’ unique or ‘very’