St. Patrick's Day Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t.”
    “Yeah,” he said, and we went into the bedroom.
    Jack is a fantastic cook. He tells me I will be, too, after he develops my taste buds, which he thinks were warped by fifteen years of convent fare. He may be right. I have only recently begun to notice individual tastes, like lemon juice in the salad dressing and cinnamon in a meat dish he puts together that perfumes the apartment while it’s cooking.
    We ate about four o’clock to give me plenty of time to get home and him another evening to work. While we were eating he briefed me on what he knew about Scotty’s murder. The crime scene unit had dug Jack’s single bullet out of the backseat of the stolen car and he had gotten his weapon back. The car had otherwise been clean. Since the owner didn’t have a certain recollection of how many miles had been on the odometer, it was impossible to determine how many miles the killer had driven. What
was
certain was that Scotty had been followed when he left Petra’s apartment and the killer had lain in wait in the parking lot for him to come back.
    “And since he had no idea Jean would stay behind withyou, you have to figure the guy was ready to kill Scotty with his wife sitting next to him in the car.”
    “And professionals don’t do that.”
    “Right. But this guy is a pro. He broke into the car without leaving a scratch, hot-wired it, and left nothing behind.”
    “So he’s a pro that wants you to think he’s an amateur.”
    “Looks like it.”
    “You think he killed Scotty for something that has to do with the lies he told about the military or where he was born?”
    “Who knows?”
    “Are they looking into that?”
    “Hard to say. Scotty never lied to the department. The captain had Scotty’s original questionnaire package faxed over from Personnel. Scotty never said he’d been in the army.”
    “So it was a story he made up for his wife and his friends, kind of a macho thing.”
    “That’s what it looks like.”
    “It’s eerie,” I said. “I feel for Jean. It’s bad enough she had to lose her husband. Now she doesn’t even know who she was married to.”
    “I’ve never lied to you,” Jack said.
    It took me by surprise. “I didn’t think you had.”
    “Neither did Jean.”
    We finished eating and did the dishes together. As I was drying the silver, the phone rang. Jack turned off the water and picked up the phone.
    “Yeah, hi,” he said after he’d answered. “No, no one. I’ve been hitting the books.… They
what?”
    I stopped rattling the silverware and started to listen.
    “Say it again.… Yeah, yeah … Shit, I don’t believe this.… OK, thanks.… I’ll call him.… Right. So long.”
    “What is it?”
    He looked several shades paler than he had when he picked up the phone. “They’ve just arrested Ray. He’s being charged with Scotty’s murder.”

4
    Shock is hardly the word for it. Jack tried Ray’s number, but there was no answer; Then he tried Petra several times until her line cleared. Yes, she had heard, and no, she didn’t know why anyone would think Ray had done it. Jack said we were on our way over.
    All I could think of was that it was preposterous; it just couldn’t have happened. Ray had been with us, with Petra, and then at home. “Last Sunday,” I said, trying to remember the sequence of events, “you called Ray from the hospital and told him Scotty had been shot. When we got back to the parking lot, he was there looking it over.”
    “I know.” Although his eyes were following the traffic, he seemed to be somewhere else.
    “What is it?”
    “That was the second time I called.”
    So he had called earlier, but no one was home. I didn’t want to pursue it. To me it was perfectly reasonable that he had left Petra’s apartment and driven home at about the time of the shooting, but that didn’t mean he had done it. A thousand other people had been in their cars in that part of New York at the same time. At worst, it was a small