Rubout Read Online Free PDF Page A

business in the alley,” I said. “I just look like I was.”
    “This is serious, Francesca. I need to know why you were in the alley.” So I told him about Dandelion and the fight with her boyfriend, and how she found Sydney in the alley.
    “What was Sydney doing in the alley, anyway?” I asked Mayhew. “She had a fight with her boyfriend, Jack, and he refused to take her home on his bike. We figured she’d call a cab from the lobby. But the cab would have stopped by the front door.”
    “She was probably going to drive herself home,” Mayhew said. “That’s her Jeep there.”
    He pointed to a black Grand Cherokee parked nearby on a muddy lot at the top of the alley’s T. There was room for about eight cars, but only Sydney was naive enough to use that lot and walk alone to the building. Sydney died about fifteen feet fromthe vehicle, and I didn’t have to ask if it was hers. Few bikers send their sons to prep school, and the Grand Cherokee had a John Burroughs sticker on the back window.
    I felt my stomach lurch again. Maybe if one of us—no, I was standing right there—maybe if
I’d
insisted she call a cab, Sydney would be alive now. She certainly wouldn’t have walked into a deserted alley. But I didn’t know she drove to the ball.
    “I was right there, Mark. I heard Jack say she asked him to bring his bike in the rain so she could ride home with him. Why did she drive to the ball?”
    “That’s one of the questions we’d like to ask Jack,” he said. “But right now we can’t seem to locate him. We can’t find her husband or her son, either. No one was home at the Vander Venter house in Ladue at two in the morning.
    “We heard Sydney was a busy lady tonight at the Leather and Lace Ball, making a big impression wherever she went: She had one death threat, one attempted rape, one fistfight, and one irate boyfriend in one short evening. We also heard she gave new meaning to ‘dancing cheek to cheek.’ And Crazy Jerry was missing for more than half an hour during the time she was probably murdered.”
    “I have no idea where Jerry was,” I told Mark, “but from what I saw, all he’d do is love her to death.”
    “I’ve seen that, too,” said Mark. “You got one drunk guy who can’t get it up and one drunk woman who says the wrong thing, and the next thing you know, he beats her to death for laughing at him.”
    Sydney’s bloody, broken face flashed in front of me again. Whoever killed her had wiped her smile off,along with most of her face. The killer could have been anyone at the ball tonight. A hundred people saw her leave. She was plainly drunk. So drunk she staggered down the steps. So drunk she walked alone into a dark alley.
    “Why didn’t the off-duty officer escort her to her car?”
    “He says he didn’t see Sydney leave. He was walking a couple of women to their cars in the far lot about that time.”
    I wanted to get away from there. The cold, clammy air felt like it came from an open grave. The flashing lights and the mindless noise made it hard to concentrate. I handed Mark back his coat. “Thanks for your help,” I said. “I need to call the
Gazette
and then go.”
    “You can use my cell phone,” he said, and handed it to me. Just briefly our hands touched, and there was a little electric shock that I don’t think came from the phone. We smiled stupidly at each other, like we’d been hit on the head with beer bottles. Then I heard the voice of the last person I wanted to witness this thrilling little scene. “Babe, you can use my cell phone, too.”
    Damnation. It was Babe, the
City Gazette
gossip columnist. Mayhew took one look at Babe and simply dematerialized. Babe earned his nickname because he called everyone, male and female, Babe. Babe had a face like a cod and an unhealthy body. He was thin and pale and looked like he left his coffin at sundown. He even wore a tux, like a B-movie vampire. He really did come alive after dark. Babe loved to cover society