Consigned to Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

weren’t shed for either Mr. Grant or my father. I was crying for myself because I felt scared and powerless, like a wood chip floating down a river, pummeled by rocks and a current that couldn’t be controlled.
     
     
    I was sitting at the Blue Dolphin bar trying to decide if I wanted to nibble or eat. Jimmy, the bartender, a chubby-cheeked, freckle-faced redhead, had offered another bowl of mixed nuts, but I was thinking that I wanted something more substantial. I took a bitter-sharp sip of my martini. I liked the way it felt to hold and drink out of a martini glass.
    “I’ll take the shrimp cocktail,” I said. “Thanks, Jimmy.”
    An old George Benson tune was playing softly. Three groups of people were concentrated near the bow windows that overlooked the Piscataqua River and Portsmouth Harbor. Their conversations were indistinct. The candles positioned along the bar turned my glass into a prism. I half watched as colors shifted when I moved the glass, but mostly I thought about the murder.
    “Are you Josie Prescott?” someone asked, breaking into my reverie.
    I turned on my barstool. A short, pudgy young man, who looked barely old enough to vote, stood beside me.
    “Yes,” I answered. “I’m Josie.”
    “Wes Smith,” he said, offering his hand.
    I shook it, feeling puzzled.
    “From the Seacoast Star ,” he said. He fished a card out of his pocket and handed it to me.
    “Really?” I asked, looking at it. According to the card, he was a reporter.
    “Why are you surprised?” he asked.
    “I’ve never actually spoken to a reporter before.”
    “May I join you?”
    I shrugged. “Sure,” I said.
    “Thanks,” he said, smiling, and sat on the stool next to mine.
    “How ya doing, Wes?” Jimmy asked as he approached. “What can I get ya?”
    “Bring me a cup of coffee, okay?”
    “You got it.”
    “Quite a situation—the Grant murder, I mean,” Wes remarked.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “So I have a couple of questions for you.”
    “For me?”
    “Yeah. Since you’re involved.”
    “What? I’m not involved.” The fear that had been dulled by martinis returned.
    “That’s not what I hear,” he said.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Weren’t you interrogated for hours at the Rocky Point police station?”
    “I wouldn’t call it interrogated. I’d call it interviewed. But that’s neither here nor there. How do you know anything about it? How do you know me?”
    “Confidential sources,” he said as if he enjoyed saying the phrase. “And I looked you up on your company’s Web site. The photo of you is a good likeness. You were easy to spot.”
    “How did you know to find me here?”
    “I spoke to someone at your office and she told me you’d be here.”
    That would be Gretchen. I wondered how I felt about her telling an unknown man that he could find me in a bar in the middle of the afternoon, and I decided I didn’t care. I smiled a little. I could hear my mother warning me how a girl gets a reputation. Maybe true, I said to myself, but I guessed it was a rep I didn’t mind getting. A long-ago memory came to me from a college spring break vacation to Mardi Gras. My at-the-time boyfriend bought me a T-shirt that read Good Girls Go to Heaven. Bad Girls Go to New Orleans. I’d worn it so often I’d nearly worn it out.
    “Why did you want to find me?” I asked, bringing myself back to the here and now as Jimmy delivered the shrimp. I squeezed a lemon wedge elegantly covered with cheesecloth and dipped a shrimp into the spicy cocktail sauce. It was good.
    He looked around. No one sat on either side of us. Still, he lowered his voice.
    “What did Chief Alverez ask you about?” he asked.
    “I don’t think I should answer that.”
    “How come?”
    I smirked at him, a give-me-a-break look.
    “Seriously,” he prodded.
    As I took another shrimp, I said, “I don’t know much about police work, but I know enough to know that Chief Alverez wouldn’t want me to discuss specifics