Red Julie (An Olivia Miller Mystery Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

said.
    Joe nodded.
    “Anything you’d like of hers? To remember her by?”
    Joe smiled. He shook his head. “I got all I need to remember her right in here.” He touched his chest at his heart.
    “How come you two never got married?” Olivia asked.
    Joe laughed. “She never asked me.”
    Olivia laughed at that. “You could’ve asked her.”
    Joe looked at Olivia. “I was afraid she wouldn’t have me.”
    “Right.” Olivia shook her head. “I see I’m getting nowhere with this line of questioning.”
    “Maybe after your first year of law school is finished, your techniques will have improved. You can ask me again then.” He winked at Olivia.
    “I will,” Olivia said. “Joe, do you have Aggie’s laptop and cell phone at your house? I can’t find them.”
    “No. Did you check her car?” Aggie’s car was parked in one of Joe’s garage bays.
    “I did. They aren’t in there. I’ve looked all over the house. Her computer backup drive isn’t there either.”
    “Must be at the shop,” Joe offered.
    “Yeah, I’ll go down to the store in the next couple of days. There’s so much to do with closing her accounts, paying bills and all, I just haven’t had a chance to get to the shop. What about her camera? Did she leave it at your house? I can’t find that either.”
    “I don’t think so. I don’t recall seeing it. I’ll look around for it,” Joe told her. “If there’s anything you need me to do to help, I’m here.”
    “I might take you up on that. I want to see what’s down in the basement, but you know how I hate dark, closed in spaces.”
    “Yes, I do. Joe chuckled. “Think it has anything to do with getting yourself locked in that closet when you were little?”
    Olivia rolled her eyes. “It could.”
    Aggie used to have an old walnut wardrobe in the basement where she kept winter coats and jackets. On a rainy day when Olivia was five, she was playing in the basement and decided it would be a good idea to hide in the wardrobe. The door locked when she pulled it shut. Her screams brought Aggie and Joe running to the cellar where Joe had to pull the old wooden door off with a crowbar. The wardrobe was hauled to the dump the next day.
    Joe and Olivia walked along in silence for a while, then came to one of the many benches placed along the Marginal Way. They were almost to their houses.
    “Want to sit for a bit?” Joe asked.
    “Yeah, let’s,” Olivia answered. They sat side by side looking out over the sea. The first stars were dotting the sky.
    “How can she be gone, Joe?”
    “Don’t know, Sweet Pea,” Joe sighed.
    “She was fine when I came up here for a few days on my March school break.”
    Joe nodded.
    “You saw her everyday. Did she seem tired? Run down? Did you notice anything different about her? Was she worried about something?”
    Joe rubbed his palms on his pants and took a deep breath. “No…nothing. I guess when it’s your time…”
    “You don’t believe that…neither do I.”
    Olivia turned to Joe. Tears were streaming down his face.
    “Joe…” She put her arm around his shoulders.
    He used both hands to brush away the tears. He forced a smile. “Big tough guy.”
    “It happens to me all the time,” Olivia told him, her voice wobbly. “Everything’s fine and then something, a scent, the breeze on my arm, a word, the way the light comes in through the window, makes me think of her and the thought of never seeing Aggie again punches me right in the gut and I almost double over. I’ll be driving in the car or standing in the shower and the tears come pouring out.”
    Joe nodded, his shoulders slumped. They sat in silence.
    “Does the pain ever go away?” Olivia asked.
    “It turns into a big hard knot, a lump that stays in your heart forever. Time goes by and it doesn’t hurt as much,” Joe told her. “But that lump is always there.”
    When Joe was thirty-four, he lost his wife to cancer after ten years of marriage and was left to raise their