The Art of Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

of the Harrison Square project to revitalize downtown, was advertised as the only true urban living in Fort Wayne. Though Madeleine thought the modernity of the apartment didn’t suit Anthony’s old-world affectations, it made his visits to the Embassy Theatre and other downtown attractions easy. His office was on the second floor, so he had at the worst a 60-second commute. And both of them enjoyed the view of Parkview Field from the balcony.
    “You’d better ease up on the blow,” Anthony warned, half-teasingly. He handed her a glass of wine and a tissue. “Those glittering eyes and that runny nose will give the game away if you’re not careful.”
    “Then don’t make it so easy for me to get it,” she retorted.
    “I won’t,” he said, not bothering to explain that the recent arrest of his drug courier had scared him. “But if I hadn’t let you have a toot every week after your friend’s little swimming accident, you’d never have gotten your act together. Maybe you don’t remember, but you were so far down the well you couldn’t see the sky above. Without a little chemical stimulation, you’d have spent the last twenty-three years rotting away in a psych ward, tied to a bed so you couldn’t cut yourself, living in darkness and filth, screaming obscenities.”
    “Is that your professional opinion?”
    “It is. What I did for you was genius.”
    “And you’re so confident it was genius that you’ll publish that report to the world? Exactly what you did to cure me?”
    He snorted. “I don’t pretend to cure anyone. Besides, genius is never recognized until the sage is long dead.”
    “Genius! Really?” Madeleine exclaimed.
    “It is genius not to pathologize everything. These days, helping a patient through sex and drugs is original and, in your case, it made you the woman you are.”
    Madeleine reached for the wine bottle but before she could grasp it, Anthony gallantly poured her another glass. “Here you are, Schatzi.”
    She smiled at him over her glass. “You were just lucky I never squealed to Daddy about your unorthodox practices. He’d have killed you with his bare hands, especially if he knew how we really used that couch.”
    “As Woody Allen said, ‘I don’t know the question, but sex is definitely the answer.’”
    Madeleine shot him a wicked smile. “I can quote too, you know. ‘Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.’”
    “Who said that?”
    “Oscar Wilde. He said practically everything worth saying.”
    “Our sex wasn’t about power. I made you into a woman. Otherwise, you’d have stayed a troubled child forever.”
    “Who says I haven’t?”
    He chuckled. “Speaking of your father, is Nettie going to stay the night with him?”
    “Of course. The silly old thing couldn’t find a better-paying job than playing nursemaid to Daddy. I just hope she lives long enough to see him through to the end.”
    “You know, your friend Kimberly is a silly old thing too.”
    “She isn’t silly and she’s my age, for heaven’s sake.”
    “After she saw in the newspaper the face of a girl you reconstructed a year ago, the one you’re getting an award for, she thought for an instant that Nicole had come back from the dead. She was so shaken that she began having flashbacks.”
    “She never said anything to me about flashbacks.”
    “She wouldn’t. She’s deathly afraid of you.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “She says you really did reach Nicole far out from the pier and when you did, you struck her in the head. That’s why she drowned.”
    Madeleine hissed her contempt. “Then why wasn’t her body found?”
    “The riptide carried her away. That part, at least, was true. She also says you got scratched, not from hitting something in the water, but from Nicole when she fought back.”
    “What a story! You don’t believe it, do you?”
    Anthony’s face was a mask.
    Her face flushed with anger, Madeleine looked away. “Kimmie’s