In the Dead of Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

Just frigging great!
    Smiling weakly, I fought to hide my intense irritation as I moved over to my desk, stopping briefly to greet Suzanne and Marietta. I offered much warmer smiles to my older girls. As usually was the case, their perturbed expressions melted away, and I tried not to picture the sordid images of me flourishing behind their wanton looks. At least Dennis could keep his job one more day.
    “I need your status reports for last week by noon on my desk,” said a harsh, husky voice from behind me.
    Matilda Jones, my direct manager. She slid around to face me before I laid my briefcase on my desktop and sat down. Matilda is a wonderful lady and the only coworker of mine whom my wife admires and respects. The feeling’s are mutual between them, too. Fiona has performed card readings for her on a couple of occasions. I often kid Matilda as being an Aussie from Queensland, Australia, greeting her with a hearty ‘G’day!” on most mornings, although she’s never even been outside the states, hailing from Flint, Michigan. Barely five feet in height, she’s an attractive fortyish lady of West Indies descent, whose affinity for fine chocolates is the only reason she struggles to keep her generous curves in line.
    “I’ll get em’ turned in on time—Dennis should have most of what you need done already,” I told her, pausing to look at several paper towel bundles from the nearby restrooms stacked on top of my desk.
    Two more cans of Lysol and another container of Clorox wipes sat next to my mouse pad. It left me just enough room to squeeze my laptop into its docking station, while I laid my bike helmet and backpack under my desk. There were no status reports from Dennis, however.
    “By noon, Fabio, and don’t be late,” Matilda reminded me, after glancing at my desk. She smirked, but the look she gave me as she headed back to her office reinforced her seriousness.
    Very funny. I couldn’t help thinking of a stupid “I can’t believe it’s not…” comeback that thankfully remained in my head behind the mouth-gate that sometimes works. Really, she isn’t opposed to having her top supervisor be a long-haired dude—so unlike the other two guys on our team of six, who always come to work wearing ties and slacks. “Dressed for success” is the way they like to put it. Desperately wanting to move up in this business, they act as if the only thing that matters in life is the proliferation of our company’s success. Even so, Matilda values my presence on her team, and I often catch her smiling when I offer a well-placed sarcastic observation to keep things grounded in our team meetings.
    As I said earlier, my work attire is a bit cleaned up from the blue-jeaned rocker I normally roll as. Slacks and a polo shirt are the standard fare for all of leadership in our center, though I was wearing biker boots instead of loafers since I rode my Harley to work. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Maybe the earring bothers some folks, but at least it’s a diamond stud instead of the gold hoop I normally wear. A little less pirate that way and more GQ.
    Anyway, not long after my laptop warmed up and I prepared to get started on the reports Matilda needed, my cell phone rang.
    It was Fiona, calling from the bookstore she works at as a day manager.
    She had some bad news. Very bad, actually.
    The killer had struck again…another music industry personality who happens to know Fiona. Dickey Rollins, Candi Starr’s manager.
    My wife was in tears, barely able to tell me the scant details she had learned about the latest murder. She was headed downtown to meet Detective Ed Sliver, one of Nashville’s premier homicide specialists, and one whom she’s assisted in the past with her psychic abilities. But she wanted me there, too. Needed me to be there, she told me.
    I needed time, at least an hour to get the reports done for Matilda. So, I pulled Dennis from his tail-chasing activities and sat his ass down next to me. By