Murder in a Nice Neighborhood Read Online Free PDF Page A

where he was going, and he said he was going to the bank.”
    There was a small silence. I mustered my voice, hoping it would come out normally. “I can see that you believe I am the bank.” The words didn’t quaver, and I took a breath to go on. “But since there is no currency in which I would have had commerce with Pigpen Murphy, you’ll have to look farther afield.”
    I should have kept my mouth shut. Drake lifted an eyebrow.
    “You’re an educated woman, Ms. Sullivan. Where did you go to school?”
    I had a moment of intense relief, so strong it was almost like a drug. So they hadn’t done a complete background check on me—yet, anyway.
    “I’m self-taught,” I said, striving for a relaxed, unworried tone.
    Bruno Morales was still concerned by my speaking ill of the dead.
    “Why did you hate Mr. Murphy so much? When you make such a point of your feelings—”
    “Hate?” I looked at him, astonished. “I didn’t hate him. I just despised him.” I looked at them both, wretched judgmental males that they were. “Actually,” I went on recklessly, “I despise most men, as a general rule.”
    They stared at me for a minute, then glanced at each other. “I see,” said Drake, finally. His voice was carefully noncommittal.
    “I’m not gay, either.” I stirred my cocoa and tried not to feel defensive. “I just don’t get involved.”
    They were silent for a moment. “So you didn’t get involved with Mr. Murphy?” Bruno Morales had a puzzled crease between his eyebrows.
    “Give me credit for a little good taste,” I muttered. “No, I had no relationship whatsoever with Murphy, aside from being badgered by him whenever he saw me.” I glanced at Drake, unable to read his expression. “Lots of men are like that. They see any solitary woman as available. I wasn’t.” I thought that over. “I’m not.”
    “So if a man was insistent enough, bothered you enough, you just might pick up the nearest heavy object and dot him one, is that it?” Drake made the suggestion in a smooth voice, ignoring Morales’s distressed cluck.
    It took an effort, but I kept my expression blank. “I have never hit anyone over the head,” I said shortly. It was the truth, as far as it went.
    “Ms. Sullivan.” Morales shook his head, concerned. “You have no alibi. You were in the area where the crime was committed—”
    “How do you know that?” I remembered his earlier comment. "What if he was killed elsewhere and dumped under my bus?” It was more than surreal to be sitting with policemen, having cocoa that tasted like coffee and discussing the violent death of someone I knew, if only slightly. Time seemed to stretch out, the way it does during intense experiences.
    “He was alive when he was shoved beneath your vehicle,” Drake said. He leaned back in his chair, as if he were enjoying himself. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have bled so much.”
    “I see.” What I saw was the steel jaws of the justice system closing around me. They could make a case against me—they were making it. There was little I could do to stop them. “And you think a woman my size could hit a big guy like Murphy over the head—”
    “A woman more likely than a man, if he was conscious,” Drake said thoughtfully. “He wouldn’t be suspicious of a woman.”
    “And then drag him over to my bus—for some odd reason—and put him underneath it—”
    “She has a point there, Paolo.” Morales smiled at me. “If he was killed somewhere along the creek, it would be far easier to tumble him into it, where it might look accidental.”
    “A strong woman, even if she was short, could drag him that distance,” Drake argued. He was enjoying himself—there was something expansive about the way he sipped his coffee. “We know Murphy was setting out to visit someone, and Ms. Sullivan was doubtless the person on his mind.”
    “So complimentary of you to think so,” I murmured, trying to control my panicky breathing. That sense of