The Girl Is Trouble Read Online Free PDF

was pretty sure that pause of hers wasn’t a coincidence.
    “But … but he said this is where he would be.” My voice shook with imaginary tears as my fingers deftly opened a dead bolt with three turns of the pick. Instead of hanging up on me, the clerk pulled the story behind my emotion out: we’d received one of the telegrams every family dreaded, announcing that my older brother, Bud, was missing in action. “Mama won’t get out of bed,” I told the sympathetic operator. “I don’t know what to do. I thought if I could find Uncle Mick, he might be able to help.”
    “Look,” the woman on the phone whispered. “I could get in a lot of trouble for this, but he was here. He and his … uh … wife checked out about an hour ago.”
    I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d found him. “Oh. Then he must be on his way home. I’m sure Mama will come around.” And with that I hung up.
    I wrote up a paragraph describing everything for Pop, finished up my notes from tailing the man over the weekend, and then did the little bit of filing and typing he’d left for me. As I was completing my tasks for the day, I heard the front door open and close. I left the office to greet Pop and found Betty Mrozenski instead.
    “ Bonjour , Iris.”
    “Hello.” Betty was Mrs. M.’s daughter. She was in her twenties and worked as a salesgirl at Macy’s. She usually came over once a month, always toting some little gift for her mother as a surprise.
    “Comment allez-vous?”
    “Fine, thank you,” I said. One of the reasons Betty got her job was because she spoke several languages, a fact she was always happy to demonstrate whether you wanted her to or not. Unfortunately, while she had a knack for learning languages, she lacked the same skill for learning proper accents, a failing that amused me and my one year of private-school French to no end.
    “You look surprised to see me,” she said, mercifully reverting to English.
    Did I? I certainly didn’t mean to. Betty had just joined us for Thanksgiving the week before, so I suppose I didn’t expect her to show up so soon after that visit. I liked her well enough, but there was something about her presence that I found off-putting. Maybe it was just that she changed things among Mrs. M., Pop, and me. When it was just the three of us I could pretend we were family, but when Betty was there, it reminded me that Mrs. Mrozenski wasn’t mine.
    “Oh, I just didn’t know you were coming is all,” I said. “Is everything all right?” Betty had a brother in the Navy who Mrs. M. spent far too many hours worrying about. I’d never met him before, but after hearing about him for so long I began to worry for her whenever the phone rang at odd hours or the Western Union courier was spotted on our street.
    “ Tout va bien . Ma invited me for dinner and I couldn’t say no. The Christmas shopping season has me too pooped to cook.” She must’ve come straight from work. She wore a smart gray suit with a fitted jacket and pencil skirt. Underneath the jacket was a crisp white blouse and a string of pearls similar to ones I’d inherited from Mama. Her hair was in an updo, her lips colored a deep red that matched her nails. She had an impressive figure that I knew was helped out by a girdle. (I’d borrowed one from her once upon a time, though she didn’t know it.) She was softer and rounder than Mama had been, but nothing like her own mother, whose large girth demanded waistless dresses. It wasn’t hard to predict that she’d be just like her one day. You could see the older woman trapped inside her, just like I could see a glimpse of the young woman Mrs. M. must’ve been every time she smiled. “Plus I brought her this.” She had the newest issue of Screen Album , with Lana Turner on the cover. “Is your pop here?” she asked.
    “He will be. Soon.” My eyes danced back toward the office. Would it be rude to leave her?
    “Is he out on a job?” She lowered her voice when she