Monkey Wrench Read Online Free PDF Page B

at how long this is taking. If it was up to my superiors at SJPD, we’d have made arrests already. But they have to answer to the FBI and the DEA. Those guys are dragging their feet. Meanwhile, there are so many kids on campus becoming addicted to pills, it makes me sick.”
    “But it’s out of your hands.”
    “That doesn’t make it any easier when I know the amount of painkillers and Prozac that’s being ingested. Those kids need help. And those dealers need to be locked up.”
    I dried my hands on the towel he was holding and reached for Buster. He came into my arms and let me stroke his lush hair. He’d been out all night again. I felt how weary he was as he sagged against me.
    “When are we going to get our life back?” I asked.
    Buster shook his head. He pulled away, brushing his hair back from his forehead. He looked so tired and vulnerable, I forgave him everything, even drinking from the milk carton.
    “HQ’s not telling me anything,” he said. He fought off a yawn. “I’m going to go home and sleep.”
    “You’re working again tonight?” I asked. Ugh. More hours in front of HGTV. I was even tiring of Josh Temple.
    He grabbed his leather jacket. “Yup. Going in at seven.”
    “I’ll come home early and make dinner,” I said. That would be our only time together.
    “Thanks,” he said. His eyes were getting heavy. He started down the hall to QP’s back door.
    “Okay if I invite Freddy?” I called after him.
    He didn’t turn around, just flipped me off without looking back.

Three
    I logged onto Twitter and started an account in the Quilters Crawl name. I tried to import the Quilters Crawl logo, a sea otter draped incongruously in a patchwork quilt. The file was the wrong size. I could not get the picture to appear next to the Quilters Crawl name.
    Frustrated, I gave up. I could be here for hours trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. This was exactly the kind of thing Vangie could do in three minutes. I gave up and wrote a note to ask her to fix my mistake. I hadn’t seen her since the day I picked up Pearl, but she often came in late at night after I was gone.
    For now, I would concentrate on finding followers. I tweeted from QP’s account about the promotion and urged my followers to join the Quilters Crawl feed. I sent an email to the quilt guild and our mailing list. I put a note on QP’s Facebook wall. I wasn’t sure we’d get enough people online by the beginning of the Crawl, but I was going to give it a try.
    I had a bright idea. I could slip a note onto the new maps when we got them. Vangie had brightly colored stickers somewhere. I found them in her bottom drawer under her extra set of car keys and an expired coupon for Hot Diggety Dog.
    I wrote Follow the Quilters Crawl on Twitter for special prizes. I printed this out and left a note for Ursula to attach them to the brochures before she handed them out. That might attract a few more people.
    Flipping over to Twitter, I saw we’d gained a dozen people. Not so bad for an afternoon’s work.
    That was all I could do for now. The growth now would come from within the social media community. Word of mouth, so to speak.
    I turned my attention to prizes. I’d gotten an email from Felix in Brooklyn saying he would send a dozen extra scissors in my regular order, early next week. One prize down. Only a dozen more to go.
    _____
    The store was empty. Ursula was thumbing through a magazine. It was the latest edition of the Ten Best Quilt Shops . Every owner wanted their place featured in the magazine’s biannual issue. I was no different. I let myself imagine QP on the cover. Some people wanted to be on the cover of the Rolling Stone , I’d rather be on this one.
    “Hey, boss,” she said. “Been kind of quiet around here.”
    “No worries. Any display ideas we can steal?”
    Ursula shook her head. “Not unless you want to feature deer antlers?” She held up the page for me to see. A shop in Montana seemed to be using Bambi