Murder in the Garden District (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

conquer all. That’s for fairy tales, lies they tell little girls. I didn’t fit in. I didn’t belong here. But when Wendell loved me, I could deal with the snide looks and snubs and whispers. I could even handle Cordelia.”
     She drummed her fingernails on the table. “Cordelia hated me from the moment I arrived in her precious house on the Avenue, the miserable old bitch, no matter how much I tried to fit in. It took about four years for me to realize that Wendell married me precisely because I didn’t , to rebel against his mother. The more I changed—the more I learned about spoons and forks and how a Garden District wife is supposed to act and behave—the less he liked it. Do you know what he told me once? If I’d wanted my wife to be a lady, I would have married the real thing .”
    The pain in her eyes was difficult to bear, so I looked down at my hands. “And it eventually became physical?” I asked softly.
    “About three years ago, when our marriage began to fail, he became abusive. At first it was emotional—insulting me in front of people, demeaning me in any way he could think of—and then it became physical. Four months ago, he came home drunk one night, and we argued. He called me every name in the book. And then—” She grabbed the edge of the table. “He raped me.”
    She held up her right hand. It was shaking. A tear rolled out of her left eye and slid down her face. She took a deep breath, wiped her face, and went on.
    “He also sprained my wrist. That’s when I left. After Cordelia forced me to come back, I bought a gun and began taking lessons at the firing range in Metairie. That wasn’t going to happen again. Ever.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said lamely. “We can finish this another time.”
     She had the grace to give me a weak smile. “Thank you,” she said, touching my hand. “But no. It helps to talk about it.”
    I reached for her hand, but decided it might not be appropriate to take it. “Then please take me through it, every detail. You said you were waiting up for him that night. You had something you wanted to talk to him about?”
    “I had some news for him I’d been putting off for several days, but I knew I couldn’t keep it from him forever. Especially not in this house. I’d decided to wait up for him, no matter how late he was, and talk to him. In spite of everything, I still loved him. I know that sounds crazy.”
    She shook her head, and looked down at her hands. She was tearing a paper coaster to shreds. She took a drink from her water glass.
    “I thought my news would change things. If I couldn’t get a divorce, if we had to stay married, I thought surely we could work something out. It would never be what it was before, but we had to be able to come to some kind of understanding.”
    “And what was your news?”
    She went on like I’d not said a word. “It was about eleven-thirty, I think, when his car pulled into the driveway. My bedroom windows open on the driveway, so I saw his headlights. I went to the window and looked out. I watched him get out of his car in the rain, and I could tell he was drunk again. Such an idiot. We couldn’t get a divorce because of how it might look, but he didn’t have a problem risking a ticket every night for driving drunk. If he and Cordelia could just get their minds out of the 1950s they’d have realized that divorce is not a death sentence in politics. Ronald Reagan was divorced, for God’s sake. But a drunk driving arrest? Kiss your political ass goodbye. I might be a nobody from the North Shore, as Cordelia likes to remind me at every opportunity, but I do know that much.”
    “So, he was drunk?” I made a note to get a copy of the autopsy report.
    “Oh, yes. I went to my desk to get my gun, but it wasn’t in the drawer .”
    “So, you knew the gun was gone before you heard the shots?”
    She looked down at her hands. The silence became uncomfortable.
    “Yes.” Her voice was practically a whisper.
    My