From Herring to Eternity Read Online Free PDF Page B

after the attack.
    Thom shook her head.
    “Lippy seemed very protective of it.” I spoke softly, a little bit of a peace offering. “But then, he always did.”
    “So nothing different today?”
    “No.”
    “Thanks,” Grant said. That was for my thaw, not for the information.
    “I saw the horn,” Thom said. “When someone said, ‘He’s dead,’ I went out and looked. It was still in his hand.”
    “It’s the case I’m interested in,” Grant said. “Did you see that?”
    “I did not,” she said.
    “So this is a case case.” I couldn’t resist.
    Thom made a face. Grant did not respond.
    “Who waited on him?” Grant asked.
    “A.J. had the counter. He sat there,” I said, pointing. “Barron was on the right side, Nicolette Hopkins on the other. She’s a mail carrier.”
    “Did he talk to anyone?”
    “Me. We spoke when I adjusted the price of the platter, right before he left.”
    “What was wrong with the price?”
    “He didn’t realize it had gone up,” I said. “I lowered it.”
    “I’d like to talk to A.J., if it’s convenient.”
    “Sure,” I told him.
    A.J. was out back on a cigarette break. I went and got her. When she went inside, I followed part way, poured coffee, then stood outside, near the Dumpster, thinking—first, about Grant, and how I couldn’t blame him for being annoyed at how abruptly I’d ended things. It wasn’t anything about him, per se, it’s just that we weren’t exciting together. After a day of crime scenes, maybe that was good for him. After a day of knishes and farfel, that wasn’t good for me. It was something I’d only noticed when I met the local slumlord, Stephen Hatfield. That man was rotten to the bone, but charismatic. I didn’t want to date him, but I wanted him.
    Then I thought about the trumpet case, probably because I didn’t want to think about the damaged part of me that preferred a crooked bully over a decent cop. When Lippy did his street musician thing, he usually had the case open, at his feet, with a few bucks in it to show passersby that their contributions were welcome.
    An opportunist would have just grabbed the cash, not the case , I thought. Unless they wanted a crime scene memento, maybe to sell on eBay. Stupider things had been done, I told myself, then looked around. Like surrounding yourself with the smell of garbage and stale cigarettes instead of going out front.
    But I didn’t want to be with anyone and I didn’t want to go back to my office where I had to deal with the residue of my talk with Sterne. I sipped coffee and looked at a cornhusk that a bird must have pulled from the trash.
    And then Grant came out the back door. He was wearing a plain blue off-the-rack blazer with khaki trousers. White shirt, yellow tie. He looked like what he was: a sweet guy without airs.
    “That was pretty awkward in there,” he said as he came toward me.
    “A little,” I smiled thinly.
    “I didn’t know whether I should come out—”
    “I’m glad you did.”
    He smiled. “I just wanted to say that as long as people keep dying around you, I’m going to keep running into you.”
    I laughed a little. “It isn’t me. The earth isn’t happy.”
    He looked at me curiously. I explained what Mad had said, and added—by way of a kind of excuse for my crabbiness—what Sterne had done.
    “Gee, I’m sorry to hear about that,” Grant said. “The dig, I mean. I’m not sure I’d put much credence in what a witch has to say.”
    “Funny,” I said, “she was a lot more real than that putz.”
    “You want me to look into zoning regulations for a loophole? They might be violating sound codes, EPA standards—”
    “Thanks, but I need to handle this myself.”
    “Don’t you have enough on your plate?”
    I shrugged. “My great-uncle Oskar used to say that aggravation kept him from worrying about his health, which is how he lived to be ninety-three. Maybe I’ll make it to one hundred.”
    Grant’s mouth twisted. “I’m not