No Way to Die Read Online Free PDF Page A

he said, as we shook hands. “Sorry, but I was mesmerized by your beautiful partner here.” He pointed to the table. “Here, let’s have a seat. Katherine should be along in a few minutes.” We sat down, and the hostess handed us menus.
    Dad turned back to Toni. “Toni, it’s been months since I’ve seen you. How are you? What’s going on in your life? You know, I feel like you’re part of the family. Bring me up to date.”
    Toni smiled. “I’m doing fine, Chuck. Working away. This guy,” she pointed to me, “keeps me busy.”
No one
calls Charles Logan Junior “Chuck” except Toni—not even my mom. Toni called him that the first time she met him, four years ago at our grand opening. I couldn’t believe my ears. I braced myself, getting ready to be embarrassed. I knew automatically that my dad was going to correct her, without equivocation and with even less tact, immediately. But he didn’t! Toni said it with a smile that melted him, and he had had no objection at all. Amazing. Ever since then, I think he actually looks forward to it. It’s something the two of them share—she calls him by a name she knows he ordinarily wouldn’t tolerate, and he happily accepts it. In fact, he wears it like a medal.
    “Claire’s always asking about you, you know,”Dad said to her. My mom loves Toni almost as much as my dad does.
    “Tell her I said hello and that I still remember that I owe her a lunch,” Toni said. “I will definitely give her a call.” Toni paused for a moment, and then she got serious. “Danny explained things on the way over,” she said. “It’s just tragic. It sounds like Thomas Rasmussen had everything to live for. I don’t understand it.”
    “Nor do I,”Dad said, shaking his head. He adjusted his napkin in his lap. “But I suppose that’s the existential question, isn’t it? How does a living, breathing man come to the conclusion that the best course available to him is to suddenly stop living? Stop the clock. How do you make sense of that?”
    Toni shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if you can, actually. You know the old saying: ‘Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.’”
    “I like that,”Dad said. “Who said that? Hume or Freud or Nietzsche—one of those guys?”
    “Nope,” she said. “Phil Donahue.”
    Dad laughed. “There you go, then,” he said. “Phil Donahue. A good Irishman.”
    Toni took a sip of water before she continued. “So,”she said, “Danny says you’ve had a long relationship with Katherine’s family?”
    “Yes, indeed—a long time. Her father was a client of my father’s. Then when my father retired, I took over the relationship and represented the Berg family on the sale of their business and personal matters from that point on. I’ve known Katherine since she was a toddler.”
    “How old is she now?” Toni asked.
    Dad looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds, lost in thought. “Katherine was born in the mid-seventies,” he said. “That means she’s what—thirty-seven? Thirty-eight? She was a very young child when I joined the firm. But—” he looked across the restaurant. The hostess was escorting a very tall, very pretty woman in our direction. “Well, here she comes now.”
    I watched Katherine Rasmussen approach our table. She was hard not to watch. She wore dark blue jeans and tan boots that reached almost to her knees. Her coat was cream-colored with some sort of faux fur around the collar. She had to be six feet tall—maybe taller with the boots. She was thin, but not scrawny. She had shoulder-length blond hair that hung in loose curls. Her eyes were a vivid, deep blue. She wore what appeared to be diamond pendant earrings along with a single strand of black pearls. She looked like a
Vogue
model.
    Dad and I stood as she approached.
    “Am I late?” she asked when she reached the table.
    “Not at all, my dear,”Dad said, reaching to shake her hand. “You’re right