Further Adventures of Carlotta Carlyle Read Online Free PDF

Cajun bass player, my then husband, Cal Therieux.
    No surprise that her hastily scrawled plea hadn’t been enough to make me abandon my Cambridge, Mass., digs. Neither was her promise of primo plane and concert tickets. Only a carefully negotiated fee had me peering nervously from the Boeing 737’s pitiful excuse for a window.
    Dee owns one item I’d rather have than anything you can name, and I certainly do not speak of my ex-husband, who’s no longer a member of Dee’s band and was never her “possession” to give or to take. Twenty-five years ago, Dee studied at the feet of the Reverend Gary Davis, the blind bluesman who wrote holy spirituals and, when the spirit moved him, played such hymns to human weakness as “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down.” The Reverend was so taken with Dee that he willed her Miss Gibson, his favorite guitar. Dee hardly plays Miss Gibson anymore, what with her stock of custom-made electrics and glittering Stratocasters. I’d treat Miss Gibson right, give her a better home.
    The vision of the Reverend Davis’s Gibson keeping company with my old National Steel guitar had me up above the clouds, grasping the armrests, trying to fly the plane via mind control.
    Ridiculous. I took six deep breaths, accepted the futility of telekinesis, and lapsed into fitful sleep.
    I switched planes at Denver’s International Airport, wandering into a nearby ladies’ room, where I splashed my face with cold water, shook out my red hair, glared at the mirror, and hoped the lighting was bad. A mother of twins maintained serene calm while one offspring vomited and the other wailed.
    While we were waiting to take off for Portland, a guy across the aisle asked the flight attendant for a Bailey’s-on-the-rocks. I hadn’t indulged during the Boston-to-Denver leg in spite of the free flow of liquor, but Bailey’s sounded like such a good idea I decided to join the party.
    Bailey’s was my dad’s home tipple of choice. At bars, it was a shot and a beer, like the other Irish cops. Even after my folks split, Mom kept a bottle for him. She drank schnapps. Peppermint. Disgusting.
    Many Bailey’s later, the jolt of the plane’s wheels smacking the Portland landing strip made me grind my teeth. I didn’t relax my jaw till the damn thing slowed. Out of control, that’s how airplanes make me feel.
    Dee Willis always had style, now she’s got the cash to go with it: a guy in full livery waited at the gate with CARLYLE printed neatly on a signboard. Broad-shouldered and burly, he resisted conversational gambits and stood at attention until the luggage carousel disgorged my bag. Hefting it, he gawked at its pathetic lightness, staring me down with narrowed eyes, as if he wanted to ask why I couldn’t have carried my stuff on board and saved us the twenty-minute wait.
    I saw no reason to explain that I needed to check my luggage because it contained a Smith & Wesson 4053, two magazines, and sufficient ammunition to turn an aircraft fuselage into Swiss cheese. I’m no U. S. marshal, just a private investigator: I can’t carry on planes. To carry at all, I’d have to check in with the Portland cops, explain my mission, and get a temporary license.
    I’d told Dee to hire somebody local. Seems like I’ve been giving Dee good advice all my life and she never takes one word to heart.
    â€œStalker.” she’d said in her increasingly urgent phone calls. At every concert in every city, always seated in the same section, wearing colorful western gear, almost like he wanted her to notice him, wanted to stand out in the crowd. Always too damn close.
    Ron, Dee’s longtime lead guitar, and some of the other guys in the band had braced the man one night. He hadn’t seemed fazed, hadn’t backed off an inch. Showed up at the next performance bold as brass—and now he, or somebody, was sending wilted flowers, sending