Sink Trap Read Online Free PDF

will have some preliminary numbers on this place today, won’t we?”
    Barry nodded, and she went back to giving orders.
    I tuned her out. It was a skill I had honed as a teenager, like most of my peers. Over the years, my mother had become very good at giving orders. I, on the other hand, had never been any good at taking them, and had stopped listening. I figured if it was really important, she’d repeat herself.
    Which she did. A lot.
    I followed Barry down the hall to the single bathroom.
    The house was tidy and organized, just as I remembered it. The dining room had a heavy table that easily seated a dozen people, and a tall china hutch crowded with antique serving pieces and the cup-and-saucer collection
Miss Tepper had inherited from her mother. There was a single bed in the main bedroom, still covered with an old-fashioned chenille bedspread. The closet door was ajar and the tiny closet was empty. Another wardrobe, similar to the one in the basement, stood open, a single bare wire hanger on the otherwise empty rod.
    The other rooms, what I had glimpsed of them, were also full of furniture and knickknacks. I wondered if Miss Tepper planned to come back and pack up her things, or just have them shipped.
    Either way, it looked like she really needed to have a big garage sale. It would cost her a fortune to move all this stuff, especially the heavy, old-fashioned furniture. It looked like family stuff, so maybe she’d want to keep it after all, despite the cost of transporting it halfway across the country.
    The house, though small and crowded, had been kept up, and we hadn’t found nearly as many problems here as we had at the warehouse.
    That should please Gregory, which in turn would please Sandra.
    I tried not to speculate about the relationship between my mother and her boss, but some things refuse to be ignored, even by my scattered mind. My father had been gone for three years, and I wanted Mom to start dating again. I just wasn’t sure I wanted her to date Gregory Whitlock.
    It wasn’t that there was anything obviously wrong with Gregory. At least nothing that I could put my finger on. He was a little too smooth, a bit too perfect, to be believed. I’d had my fill of smooth men, and I’d learned not to trust them with my heart or my business.
    I suspected my mother was trusting Gregory Whitlock with both.
    “Georgiana?” My mother’s voice echoed down the hallway of the empty house. She peered through the door.
    I was lifting the lid off the toilet tank, while Barry made notes on the condition of the fixture. It was functional, but an older, high-flow model. Once it was removed
to retile the floor, the local building ordinance said it couldn’t be reinstalled.
    I lowered the slab of porcelain back into position. It thunked loudly into place, despite my efforts to lower it gently. Someday, I swore, I would learn how to do that without making a sound.
    “Yes?” I avoided calling her “Mother,” since we were on the job. Instead, I didn’t call her anything. At least that wouldn’t bother Barry.
    “Are we still on for Tuesday night?”
    I glanced at her in confusion. “Tuesday?”
    “Yes, Georgiana. Tuesday. Dinner with me and Gregory? You do remember we talked about this, don’t you?”
    I shook my head. “Tuesday’s class night. I’m sure I told you that.”
    Barry motioned for me to turn on the water in the bathtub, then flushed the toilet while the water was running. The tub stream slowed to a trickle, and he scribbled in his notebook.
    “Are you sure you can’t make it?” Sandra Neverall was not a woman to take no for an answer. But this time she would have to.
    I turned off the pale brown dribble in the tub, and looked up at her. “No way I can miss my class. We’ll have to make it another night.”
    “Monday, then.” The note of triumph in her voice told me she knew exactly which nights I had class, and had maneuvered me into her schedule. I had to admire her negotiating