Dead by Any Other Name Read Online Free PDF

herself.”
    â€œNo fucking way she killed herself,” she spit out. Then she went absolutely still, except for her face, which slowly dissolved into a tear-riven blob.
    You have to let people cry, give them space, especially if you’ve known them for under a minute. But the vehemence of her instinctive outburst—“No fucking way she killed herself”—bolstered my suspicions.
    After she’d cried for a while she got up, walked into Natasha’s kitchen, blew her nose on a paper towel, opened the fridge, took out a bottle of beer, twisted it open, took a long swig, and said, “I knew she was in trouble, I just didn’t know … oh fuck! ” She started crying again but this time it was over pretty quickly. “That kid was my best friend since the day she moved up here.”
    â€œSo you met her when she moved to Phoenicia?”
    â€œYeah, I’m a singer, too. Sorta. I used to be. You know, clubs around here. But I been waiting tables at Brio’s for thirty years, she came in, I served her, it was instant, we clicked, she was easy to click with, what a sweet kid, but lonely, screwed up. She’d messed up big time in the city, you know, fucked up her career. She needed a friend. Who fuckin’ doesn’t?”
    Billie walked into the living room, sat across from me, ran a finger around the rim of the beer bottle, and a terrible heavy sadness descended on her—she suddenly looked older, and broken.
    â€œWe sang together a few times, you know, just around in Woodstock and stuff, but that was such a gift she gave me. To appear with Natasha Wolfson, I mean she had CDs and reviews from hot-shit critics and shit. She had a lotta life in her, that kid.” This time the tears were quiet and slow.
    â€œBillie?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œCan I ask you something?”
    â€œG’head.”
    â€œIf she didn’t kill herself, how do you think she died?”
    â€œI think somebody killed her.”
    â€œWho would kill her, why?”
    Billie’s eyes narrowed again, she studied me for a moment, then said, “Pavel, that guy she’s been seeing, he’s fuckin’ weird .” I sensed she was holding something back—I’d seen it a thousand times with clients: the pause, the tentative tone, evading eye contact. Maybe she wasn’t lying, but she wasn’t truthing either.
    â€œWeird how?”
    â€œToo quiet, like a fox, you don’t know what’s really going on.”
    â€œWhere did she meet him?”
    â€œYou tell me and we’ll both know.”
    â€œWhat’s he like?”
    â€œHe’s from Czechland or someplace like that, fuckin-a- gorgeous and working it bigtime, but pretending he isn’t, you know what I mean? He’s catnip to the chicks, I mean look at Natasha, she was gone on him, it’s that whole still-waters-run-deep thing, you look in those green eyes of his and it’s like you’re hypnotized.”
    â€œDo you know where he is?”
    â€œHe lives down in Stone Ridge, on some big estate owned by two crazy English ladies, he lives above the garage or some shit, one of them is in love with him, I never trusted him. Yeah, he’s hot, but shifty, Natasha got her head turned.”
    I just let her words hang there. I flashed on the dominatrix garb in the closet.
    â€œHow was Natasha making a living these days?”
    She downed the beer in a long swallow, went and got another one. Billie was hard, hard and soft, but mostly hard—you get kicked enough times, you get hard. The breezy Stevie Nicks who’d blown in here was a memory: she’d lost the friend who made her feel good about herself = more hard in her life.
    â€œHer rich-ass parents weren’t helping her, that’s for sure. Those two are first-class creeps.”
    â€œYou met them?”
    â€œYeah, they came up here once, they’re oh-so-motherfuckin’-charming if you can