Coming Unclued Read Online Free PDF Page B

tried to tell you about eating too many carbs. And you’re probably sensitive to wheat.”
    Julie took a bite of a cookie and looked a little startled by the lack of snap. “How old are these?”
    “Oh — sorry. No preservatives.”
    Julie dropped the cookie on the plate and turned her attention back to me.
    “What about your drinking?” Julie asked. “Have they asked any questions about that?”
    “They know I was at a party. I did mention that I don’t have the clearest memory of last night.”
    “It’s going to come up Val. Unless they happen to find the murderer hiding under your bed, they are going to be looking at you. And you do have a history.”
    “Minor incidents — nothing like this.”
    Heather and Julie shot each other a glance. A loaded glance.
    Heather crossed her legs and leaned forward, giving me a little pat on the knee. “We’re not trying to upset you Val, but we have to face facts. The police are going to be asking questions. There’s no denying you do have a history of violence when you drink.”

CHAPTER 4
    “There’s the Richard Bannon thing,” she continued. “And Jack’s wife. And I don’t know —there’s probably some other incidents.”
    The Richard Bannon thing. That could hardly be considered violence. Richard Bannon is — well everyone knows who Richard Bannon is. A forty-something movie star who makes a decent movie every five years and a lot of drivel in between. When I had my encounter with him he was especially ‘hot’. He’d recently married a young starlet, had an adorable little daughter and he was constantly on the cover of all the tabloids; the picture of a devoted family man. Richard was in Toronto filming a movie. A fun family movie co-starring a talking horse because he “wanted to make a movie my daughter could see.” I saw it. The comedic high point was when the horse took a dump on the kitchen floor.
    On a Friday night after a particularly long week I’d met Julie downtown for dinner. We had Indian food and then decided to pop into a piano bar for a drink. One grown-up cocktail and then home. We found a great table in the corner and settled back to watch the action around us. And then little Richard Bannon came in. That’s how I think of him now. Little Richard. He couldn’t be more than five foot six inches in his boots. Little Richard and his entourage settled in at the bar and there was no way Julie and I were leaving. We ordered a second drink and then a third and Julie tells me a fourth as we watched the drama unfold at the bar. The rest of the night is a little hazy. A lot hazy. I can’t remember any of it. Apparently Little Richard was getting very friendly with a beautiful young girl. Extremely friendly as in nuzzling her neck and whispering in her ear. Given that all the young women there that night were six-foot glamazons, he must have been standing on his tiptoes. In any case, what apparently transpired is that as we were leaving I gave Richard a really hard kick in the rear-end and told him he should be ashamed of himself acting like that when he had a wife and baby waiting at home. Like I cared about Richard Bannon’s family life. Well it seems that I kicked him so hard that he fell over. From all reports it was quite a scene and while Julie somehow managed to hustle me out of there before I was arrested for assault, the story made all the papers. They got my name from my Visa receipt. Little Richard’s people managed to spin the story so that I came off as a crazy drunk and Richard being a good, kind family man wasn’t going to press charges. I could hardly defend myself, since I had no recollection of the incident. Crazy drunk was actually a pretty fair assessment. It wasn’t my finest moment. An amusing anecdote, mind you, but hardly worth the grief. Mr. Potter came to me a few days after the news hit the papers and told me, and he did seem genuinely sad about it, that my promotion to customer service associate would have to be