Dust Up: A Thriller Read Online Free PDF

wouldn’t accept it when they did. But if I was going to pursue this any further, I needed more to go on, more to confirm my suspicions.
    That’s what I told myself as I pulled up in front of the large stone house owned by Dorothy Hartwell, Ron’s mother. Miriam didn’t seem to have any family of her own, so I figured I would start with Ron’s.
    I walked up the long slate path, past a painfully manicured lawn and onto the cavernous porch, where I rang the bell. Mrs. Hartwell might have been hurting, but not for money.
    The woman who came to the door was in her seventies, handsome and polished even though she had obviously just been crying.
    “Can I help you?” she asked, poised despite her sorrow.
    I showed her my badge. “I’m with the Philadelphia Police Department. I’d like to ask you a few questions about Ron.”
    She glanced at the badge. “Of course,” she said, sad and weary, stepping back and motioning me to come inside.
    “I’ve already spoken to the other detectives. You know that, right?”
    “Yes,” I said. “And forgive me if any of this is repetitious…”
    “I understand,” she said, waving off my apology.
    She offered me a beverage as she led me to the dining room. I politely declined, and we sat at the table.
    “I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said.
    She closed her eyes and gave me a brief nod, swallowing hard against the screaming anguish that churned below the surface. Then she opened her eyes, once again composed. “What would you like to know?”
    “Do you have any idea of anyone who might have wanted your son dead?”
    A tiny fraction of a smile tugged at her mouth. “None at all. I mean, apparently my daughter-in-law, but I don’t see that happening.”
    “You don’t?”
    “I wasn’t crazy about Ron and Miriam getting married. When Ron’s brother Brian introduced them, I thought she was a little … young … a little childlike. Too much like Brian, in a way. But by the time they got married, I realized she was the sweetest young woman I’ve ever known and that they were very much in love. They remained so. The detective I spoke to earlier, he was very nice, but he kept saying how surprising it can be when something like this happens, and I know that. Half the time those who do terrible things are said to be the nicest people, of whom you would least expect it. Even so, I can’t accept it. Ron and Miriam were very happy together, happier than I ever thought he would be. But apart from that, Miriam wasn’t the type to swat a fly. Literally, she would be the one coaxing it out the window.” She laughed wistfully. “I thought it was ridiculous at first. I mean, a fly? But that’s how she is. Even if she hated my son, I couldn’t see her … doing what they say. And especially not now.”
    “Why not now?”
    Barely moving, she somehow shrugged, rolled her eyes, shook her head, and looked away, all at the same time, then looked at me with the resignation of a very private person who had already revealed personal information way beyond her comfort level and was about take another step down that road.
    “They’d been trying to have a baby,” she said, lowering her voice as if we weren’t the only ones there. “They’d been going to doctors, having procedures.”
    “Infertility treatments?”
    She nodded.
    “When was that?”
    “They were still going, as far as I know.”
    Not exactly what you’d expect in advance of a double cross and a murder. Her eyes teared up and I gave her a moment.
    “You say they met through Ron’s brother?”
    “Yes, Brian. His younger brother.”
    “How do they get along?”
    She smiled bitterly. “Surely you don’t think his brother killed him.”
    I smiled gently back. “Not at all. I’m just trying to gather some background. See what other leads might be out there. You never know what little bit of information might end up being crucial.”
    “He was here Sunday night, as I told the other detective. He came over for