The Wolfe Widow (A Book Collector Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

he was uncharacteristically quiet for the drive home. I was glad. I needed the time to brood.
    *   *   *
    MY OLD BEDROOM in my uncles’ home was pink and white, the girliest place ever. Think of it as an oasis of frills in a houseful of Kelly green knickknacks and ginger chest hair. I sat on the bed and glanced around. Nothing had changed. This was my second time in eighteen months finding myself in my childhood digs. A herd of My Little Ponies gazed at me with pity. My uncles would always take me in. They’d raised me and they loved me, but ending up back where I started felt like failure to me. The first time was after my ex-boyfriend left me too broke and broken to continue grad school. At least I understood what had happened that time. Now here I was again. What was this about? I thought Moon Dancer shook her head a little in shame.
    So I’d been fired. Big deal. People get fired all the time. Not in my family, of course, since all my uncles are what we like to call “independent businessmen.” Sometimes they call themselves “entrepreneurs” or operators of “creative start-ups.” But people who do get fired must get fired for a reason. I’d always supposed that as a rule, they’d done something wrong. I couldn’t think of anything that I’d done, except maybe tease Vera about Archie Goodwin.
    Hardly a hanging offense.
    I jumped when my iPhone sounded. Smiley!
    “Hello, Officer Dekker,” I said trying to work a casual tone into my voice without much success. It would have been nice to cry on his shoulder, but we don’t really have a crying-on-shoulders kind of relationship. Anyway, he wasn’t there, was he?
    His voice was low. “Sorry, I can’t talk long because we’re not supposed to be on the phone. I won’t be back for another week. Didn’t want you to worry.”
    Didn’t want me to worry?
    “I’ve been fired!” I wailed. It’s not like me to wail, but, in my defense, let me plead lack of sleep and extreme stress.
    “What?”
    “Fired. I’ve been fired.”
    After a brief silence, he said, “The line is pretty bad. I thought you said you’d been fired.”
    “I did say that. I have been fired. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” This was like being stuck in a Three Stooges film in which I got to play Curly, Moe and Larry.
    “There’s a lot of noise here,” he said. “But who would fire you?”
    I didn’t mean to snap at him. “Vera. Who else? She’s the person I work for, make that worked for.”
    “But you do everything for her. You put your life on the line. You—”
    “Thank you for the vote of confidence, but she did fire me and I had only a couple of hours to get my stuff out of Van Alst House.”
    “Really? That’s incredible.”
    “Yes and that’s because I was fired, and the apartment was part of my compensation for working there. Therefore, no working, no apartment.”
    “But—”
    “And no signora’s food.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “I don’t know. Right now I’m back in my old bedroom at Uncle Mick’s. I don’t know what people do when they get fired. I don’t even know anyone who ever got fired.”
    Smiley said, “I was fired once.”
    “What? You never were!”
    “For sure. From the ice cream shop the summer I was fifteen. Something about supplies running low whenever I was on duty.”
    I laughed despite myself. “I don’t know what reason Vera had. Supplies weren’t running low, for sure.”
    He said, “In the adult non-ice-cream world, people get fired because their jobs aren’t necessary anymore and they disappear, the jobs I mean.”
    “My job didn’t disappear. In my position, I had lots to do.”
    “Well, it’s not corporate downsizing, but she could be cutting costs. You said she sold some things lately, didn’t you?”
    I thought about that reason. I knew well that the Van Alst pockets were not as deep as they once had been and Vera had been liquidating assets to keep her book addiction going. I said, “But