Nick of Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

would have.”
    “That’s what you say now ,” she said.
    Nick didn’t like the sound of that. He cocked his head to one side and studied her for a moment. “I don’t get it,” he said.
    “What?”
    “How come you’re not married?”
    “Nick—what kind of a question is that?”
    “I just mean—you know—you’re such an attractive woman and all.”
    “Nice save,” she said drily. “I don’t know . . . I guess it depends on who you ask. My dad says it’s because I’m too intimidating .  . . He says not a lot of men can handle a woman with a PhD. My mom thinks it’s because I’m too much of a tomboy, or maybe it’s the job—you know, the bones and all. Me, I think it’s because I’m running all the time—usually in the wrong direction.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Sort of like you’re doing right now—if you know what I mean.”
    “It’s deep—I’ll try to figure it out.”
    “So you think I’m an attractive woman?” she asked.
    “I suppose so,” he said with a shrug.
    “You never said so.”
    “It didn’t come up.”
    “If you thought I was attractive, how come you never tried to hit on me?”
    “This could get ugly,” Nick said. “Would you excuse me? I’m going to see if I can find Pete Boudreau.”

5
    N ick followed the Schuylkill Expressway along the river, then crossed over on Roosevelt Boulevard and headed northwest toward the neighborhood of Upper Roxborough. Nick had briefly considered leaving his car downtown and taking Septa’s regional rail to Manayunk, but the parking rates in Center City were abominable and he still would have had to take a cab from the station to Upper Roxborough. He decided to take his car instead, winding along Henry Avenue with the beautiful trees of Fairmount Park on his right.
    It had been a long time since Nick had visited Pete Boudreau at his home in Upper Roxborough—back before Lila passed away. Prior to Lila’s death Nick had been invited out to the house for dinner after almost every monthly Vidocq meeting; since then his meetings with Pete had been consigned to the paneled luncheon rooms of the Downtown Club. Lila was a charming woman who had always joined seamlessly into their conversations, despite the bizarre and repugnant peculiarities of their respective forensic specialties. But Lila’s death left a yawning chasm in Pete’s life, and Nick suspected that the reason he was no longer invited to the house was that his presence would only serve as a painful reminder of the past.
    The farther north he drove, the more residential the neighborhood became, gradually evolving into a traditional suburban landscape of tree-lined streets and single-family dwellings. Nick had trouble remembering the directions and made two wrong turns before finally pulling up in front of the unassuming fifty-year-old split-level with white vinyl siding and a gray shingled roof. He parked across the street from the house and looked at it; the blinds and curtains were all drawn, despite the early-afternoon hour and the seasonable May weather. It looked as if Pete might be off traveling somewhere, but Nick seriously doubted it. By nature Pete was a homebody; it just wasn’t in his blood to wander far from home, especially now that Lila was gone.
    Nick walked to the front door and knocked. The aluminum storm door made a tinny, rattling sound, too faint for Pete to hear from deep inside the house, so he opened the storm door and knocked on the solid wooden doorframe. He waited, but there was no response. After several more attempts, each louder and more insistent than the one before, he took out his cell phone and punched in Pete’s home number. He pressed his ear against the door and listened . . . There it was—the familiar trill of a landline coming from deep in the house. Nick could visualize the phone’s exact location; he knew right where it hung on the kitchen wall.
    He walked around the right side of the house. A narrow concrete