"A Murder In Milburn", Book 3: Death In The Library Read Online Free PDF Page A

never mind, I like you as you are. You’re going to make a good stand-in for Watson to my Holmes.”
    “Oh Katya, you can’t be serious.”
    “Of course I am.”
    “Katya, this is madness.”
    “It’s all I can think to do,” Katya said, with a sudden sob. “I can’t help poor Petyr in any other way.”
    Nora nodded.
    “Will you help me, or not?”
    “I’ll help,” Nora said. “But I can’t promise it’ll do any good. At best, I promise to not do any harm.”
    “You’re a sharp woman and you’ve been going around observing all of us. You’ll see things from a different angle while my brain treads the tired old tracks of thought. If you help me, with my insider knowledge and your outsider’s perspective, we can solve this.”
    “All right,” Nora said. “Let’s see what we can do.”
    Katya got up, and some of the color was coming back in her face.  
    “Great!”
    “How about first, you tell me a little about your father in law, and your relationship with him?” Nora asked.
    “I didn’t have a relationship with him,” Katya said “We’d never met before today. I met Petyr in Portland when I was trying to get my yoga studio running. He was in my photography group. We met while we were taking photos at the Japanese Garden. It wasn’t love at first sight. I mean, Petyr’s very good looking, so of course I noticed him. But I didn’t like his personality. Actually, I found him intolerable and cocky at first. I liked his friend better.”
    “So what happened?”
    “We met again at his friend’s party,” Katya said. “The friend had invited me, but ended the evening by kissing some blonde in the kitchen. So I went out on the roof to clear my head, and he was there with his camera, taking photos of the tiles.” Katya laughed. “He was a different person when he wasn’t showing off for a group. He was quiet, and introspective. He and I sat and watched the stars, and talked to each other all night about all the things we wanted to do. I think I fell in love with him right away.”
    Nora smiled, wondering if Katya and Lila would ever realize the mirror-images in their love stories.
    “Petyr’s very driven,” Katya said. “Growing up, his father would taunt him all the time about being too feminine, and so he took up bodybuilding and weightlifting. It seems to me sometimes that all his choices are a rebellion, a way to prove his father wrong. That’s what Petyr wants most.”  
    Nora nodded.
    “Petyr loved art, but his father looked down on that. He said artists were lazy people who didn’t make money, and always ended up being leeches on the relatives. Petyr was determined to prove his father wrong, and it was important to him that his business succeeded. He said most of the pride he felt from earning money was the feeling that he could throw it in his father’s face, that he could say, ‘I made it without you, even though you told me I’d fail.’”
    “It’s sad,” Nora said. “Sad to have a relationship like that.”
    “I felt much more thankful for my own uncomplicated dad,” Katya said. “He’s been supportive of me no matter what I did. Petyr loves him too.”
    “It sounds like Petyr had a lot of anger towards Reynold.”
    “He did,” Katya said. “I’ll be honest about it, he did. Even today, he was scared before he announced that he’d be married. He knew his father wouldn’t take it well, but he wanted to show me off. He wanted to make it clear to his father that he made his own choices.”
    “Your future father-in-law didn’t approve of his choices,” Nora said. “Did he?”
    Katya sighed.  
    “I think he would have disowned Petyr if he’d insisted on marrying me,” she said. “I think that Petyr would have chosen to marry me anyway.”
    Nora nodded. She had a thoughtful look on her face.
    “Look, I know I’m telling you all this, and maybe you’re thinking that Petyr sounds like he could have killed Reynold, but that’s not true. Petyr’s