Killer Commute Read Online Free PDF Page B

about it until this morning.”
    â€œConvenient. Everything about this murder is so convenient. For some people.”
    â€œThen it was murder for sure, not suicide?” The gull activated effortlessly and glided over the compound, feet flattened up under his tail feathers, gray wingtips on his underside.
    â€œMr. Fiedler was suicidal?” Detective Amuller’s blond hair was clipped short, but still it curled. It gave him a babyish appearance at odds with his considerable height—six-two or -three.
    â€œNot that I ever noticed. But we survivors were talking about it this morning—like it would have been a way for Jeremy to die while I was watching the courtyard and the Trailblazer.”
    â€œI’m afraid things aren’t that convenient, Charlie Greene.”
    *   *   *
    Charlie and J. S. Amuller stood with Maggie Stutzman in Jeremy Fiedler’s living room.
    â€œWhat does J. S. stand for?” Charlie asked him, distracted. There was something wrong with the script here. Or was it the set? She loathed it when people talked cinema—life was too surreal anyway. Now she was doing it. Even in her thoughts. Jesus.
    â€œStands for ‘Just Standard’ for cops, okay? I don’t want to hear that question again. Understood?”
    â€œNo problem. I’ll ask Officer Mary Maggie.”
    â€œI am looking for clues into the life of a man you two have been living close to for years and tell me you know nothing about but didn’t realize that until he was murdered.”
    â€œWhat I want to know is why he thought he had to hotwire the compound.” Charlie reached a hand to the art-deco angular light fixture hanging way off center from the ceiling. “And why you didn’t get a shock when you opened the back gate last night.”
    â€œ Don’t touch anything. Either of you,” the homicide man yelled for the umpteenth time.
    Maggie straightened and pounded her chest. “He’s making me afraid to breathe. I’m not getting enough oxygen.”
    â€œOkay, you both make great comediennes, but we have a murder and those who live here are at the top of the list as suspects. If you get my drift.”
    â€œNo.” Charlie reached for her friend. “She’s on allergy medication and it makes her heart beat funny. This has nothing to do with you, J. S., honest.” But even as she said it, she saw the disbelief in the detective’s eyes. Some people are just never convinced that there is anything that has nothing to do with them.
    For some reason it was at this point that Charlie Greene had a glimmer as to how deep this shit could get here.
    Detective J. S. stomped across Jeremy’s living room and up the two steps to the dining-room ledge. (All the living rooms and patios in the complex were sunken, for some reason that escaped Charlie altogether). He wore a longish raincoat like he was auditioning for a TV movie. Under the raincoat he wore the same sport coat and pants as last night. The result was rumpled, again suggesting a TV cop circa the 1980s.
    Maggie mentioned the M word and it turned him off so, he was speechless. His grimace, as loose as his grin, made the chipped tooth add to his boyishness.
    Maggie lay on the floor with her bottom up against Jeremy’s couch and bent her knees, putting her lower legs and feet on its seat, her hand over her heart. Charlie laid her hand over Maggie’s and after a few minutes she could feel the tempo of the heartbeat’s sudden return to normal.
    â€œYou’re too young for menopause, Maggie—what forty, forty-one? Has to be those allergy pills. You’ve got to get off them. So your nose runs all the time—”
    â€œI haven’t taken them for three months. Charlie, my clock’s running down.” Those snapping blue eyes dripped tears into her ears.
    J. S. groaned. “I hate to bother you two at such a dramatic moment