A Farewell to Legs Read Online Free PDF

death,”
Abby said. “She wants you because she knows she can supervise the
investigation as long as you’re watching her bust line instead of
the facts.” Abby knelt down to look under the bed.
    “Her bust line is a fact. Well, two facts actually.
Besides, why does Steph need to supervise the investigation?”
    “ Steph is from D.C. All those people are
control freaks.”
    I sighed, which I don’t do often. “She’s not from
D.C.—she’s from Bloomfield, New Jersey.”
    “And you’ve wanted to hump her ever since she lived
there.”
    There are few things my wife does that seriously
annoy me, but when she talks the way she thinks men talk, she can
piss me off with the best of them. Mostly because I don’t
talk like that, and I’m pretty sure I’m a man. She found her pajama
bottoms under the bed, and when she stood up, holding them, I was
standing within a foot of her, looking right into her eyes. Abby
was a little startled, but she grinned, thinking she’d scored a
withering blow.
    “I’d like to point out that I was looking for a way not to help her when you volunteered me,” I told her, my
breathing getting a little heavy. “Now, you listen to me. There is
no one more beautiful, no one smarter, no one sexier, no one
funnier, no one I’d rather be with on this planet, than you. You
are the absolute center of my life, and I would gladly devote all
my time on this earth to convincing you that nobody has ever loved
anyone as much as I love you, but unfortunately, we need to sleep,
eat, and pay the mortgage. So stop being a moron.”
    She took a moment, smiled, and dropped her pajama
bottoms on the floor.
    “Come on,” Abby said. “Let’s mess up the bed
again.”
    And somehow, I forgot to ask whether she was
familiar with People for American Values.

Chapter

Six
    L ydia Soriano, Snapdragon ’s features editor, called me at ten the next
morning. Impressive, especially considering it was a Sunday.
Stephanie, or Crazy Legs, must have had more clout than I’d
estimated.
    “Mr. Tucker, we’re interested in a 5,000-word piece
on the murder of Louis Gibson. I understand you have some
background on the subject.” Lydia had a very businesslike voice,
but you could tell there was a human being in there somewhere.
    “Call me Aaron. Please.” I started. “And actually,
no. I don’t have any background at all. What I have is a knowledge
of. . . Louis from his high school days and a very loose
friendship with his wife from around the same time.”
    “I understand that you’re reluctant,” she said
without missing a beat. “But I’m told that you have investigated
some murders before.”
    Stephanie must have been very persuasive. “I’ve
investigated exactly one murder, and I managed to solve it by
annoying the murderers enough that they came after me. I wouldn’t
exactly call that a stellar record.” I wanted Snapdragon to
know exactly what it was getting, if it was getting anything.
    “You know, Aaron, you keep this up, and I’m going to
feel like you don’t want to work for us.” Well, what do you
know? There was a sense of humor there after all.
    “I’ve always wanted to work for Snapdragon. In fact, I’ve queried you guys maybe fifty times in the past five
years. I just want you to have an accurate picture,” I told Lydia.
“If you hire me, you’re paying, um. . .”
    “Ten thousand dollars.”
    I took a cleansing breath, the only useful thing I
got from being a Lamaze coach twice. “. . . Ten thousand
dollars, for someone who is not an investigative reporter, a crime
reporter or a political reporter, and you’ll be hiring him to
investigate a crime that is, in all likelihood, politically
motivated. Don’t do it just because Stephanie Jacobs told you
to.”
    “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t call because of
Stephanie’s reputation,” said Lydia. “But I do the assigning around
here, not her. And it’s my ass on the line if you turn out to be