A Killer in the Rye Read Online Free PDF

Dani inside, saw who was outside, and slammed the door. Except that I forgot about the cinder block. Flushed with anger and embarrassment, I pushed it hard with my foot, heard it shatter as it fell from the platform, then slammed the door. I heard a low laugh behind it.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Dani asked.
    â€œThat was Robert Reid, publisher of the Nashville National. ”
    â€œDuh. He was asking me a question!”
    â€œDid it occur to you to ask me if it was okay to talk to the press?”
    â€œActually, it didn’t,” Dani said. “It’s, like, free speech and the Second Amendment.”
    â€œThat would be the First Amendment,” Grant shot back, scooting up behind me and looking at me, his nominal girlfriend. Then he put his arms on my shoulders, turned me toward him, and said, “I’ll deal with Reid. Like I told you, I think we all need to pack it up for the day.”
    His take-charge-ness calmed me. Maybe because it was the most attention he’d paid me since Moses was in diapers.
    â€œFine. I will go home, Grant. Alone. Thom, will you and Luke lock up, since you all obviously know what’s best?”
    â€œGwen, dude, you’re being a little harsh—”
    â€œWhat I said before, Luke. Double down.”
    Those were my last words before walking out the front door. Then I slammed that door like I had the one in back.
    As it shut, I heard the CLOSED sign fall to the ground.
    I didn’t care. Someone else could pick it up. The sea of onlookers parted. Moses was no longer in diapers. But as I walked toward the garage, the magnitude of my having lost it began to hit me.
    It’s too late to do anything about that, I thought.
    I wrote an imaginary Post-it and stuck it on my brain.

    Note to self: apologize to everyone in the morning.

Chapter 4
    It wasn’t the first time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. I’d had my share of walks of shame in the past.
    There was the Jim Tyler time. I met him at an art gallery opening during my sophomore year at NYU. I remember hearing him put the security chain on the door after I left that morning, but I don’t recall it being latched the night before. That was nice. Then there was the guy who rode me so hard, I had a pillow crease on my face all the next morning. That mark lasted longer than the hoped-for relationship, thank you very much, Mr. Reynolds, damn you. And, of course, there was Phil Silver, who managed to put on his pants and socks to “walk me home” before sitting on the edge of the bed and saying “Are you sure?” after I said, “Really, you don’t have to.” I ended up marrying that jerk. Or maybe I was the jerk. I was still working on that.
    But those walks of shame didn’t come close to the one I almost had to take after leaving the deli that Friday morning.
    This time I’d found a dead man; “contaminated” a crime scene, as I’d overheard the forensics boys muttering; spoiled an important event; hurt my foot kicking a cinder block; insulted my employees; and smashed my boyfriend’s heart like a gefilte fish. And to top it all off, it wasn’t until I was out the door that I realized all my keys were on the ring I’d dropped in the bread truck. Grant had asked an officer to recover them. Thom scrubbed them clean and left them on my desk. Luckily, I had a spare house key under my doormat for Grant. At least it was for him. Past tense, I was thinking. If Mother Teresa had been a lesbian and had dated, not even she would’ve put up with the bile I spewed. The parking garage had a spare set of car keys in case they had to move me. I’d borrow those.
    In short, that was one walk of shame I wasn’t taking.
    It was strange to be walking through downtown Nashville during a weekday. I’d spent almost a year working so hard, indoors, during those prime daylight hours that I really had never stopped to notice the