Wicked Business Read Online Free PDF Page B

perspective, they’re probably just around the corner in the bushes, trying to get her pants off.”
    He disappeared around the side of the building, and Danko and I stood waiting.
    “What happened to your foot?” I asked her.
    “Bunion surgery,” she said. “I’ve been sitting with the stupid thing elevated for two weeks, doing nothing but eating. I was struggling with my weight before the surgery, and now I’m totally fat . And if that isn’t bad enough, Miss Snowball’s going to get pregnant with that trailer-trash tomcat.” There was some god-awful screeching and howling, and Danko stumbled back and put her hand to her heart. “My baby!”
    “It might not be so bad,” I said. “She could be faking it. I mean, who hasn’t faked it once or twice, right?”
    A moment later, Diesel emerged from behind the house with Miss Snowball. The diaper was shredded but still attached, her fur was standing straight out, and her eyes were almost popped out of their sockets.
    “Was that you screeching and howling?” I asked Diesel.
    “Princess wasn’t happy with hotshot’s foreplay technique.” He handed Snowball over to Danko. “I hope the cat you’ve got coming tomorrow knows what he’s doing.”
    “We wanted to ask you about Gilbert Reedy,” I said to Danko. “I believe you dated.”
    “We met for coffee, but he started wheezing after five minutes. Turns out he’s allergic to cats.”
    “Did he say anything interesting in those five minutes?” I asked her. “Did he mention a key?”
    “No. He said on his form that he had the key to findingtrue love, but that was it. Hard to talk about keys and true love when you’re having an asthma attack.”
    Diesel backtracked to Salem and parked in the lot of the public library. “Sharon Gordon is third on the list. She’s a librarian. Thirty-six years old. She lives with her mother. And her Facebook page says she likes Nora Roberts, s’mores, and penguins.”
    “You can trust a woman who likes s’mores,” I said. “It’s the gooey factor.”
    “Something to keep in mind.”
    We entered the building and found Gordon shelving books in the children’s section. She was tall and slim, with brown hair pulled back in a clip at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a pale pink knit top, tan slacks, and flats.
    She gasped when she turned and saw Diesel. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m used to seeing short people in this room.”
    “We’d like to talk to you about Gilbert Reedy,” Diesel said.
    “Are you police?”
    Diesel picked a picture book about trucks off her cart and paged through it. “That’s a complicated question.”
    Sharon pushed her cart forward and placed a book on a shelf. “I met Gilbert through a dating service. He said he was looking for true love.”
    “And?”
    She shrugged. “We went out a couple times, and I thought he liked me, and then this woman named Ann came along, and he got weird and dumped me.”
    “Do you have a last name for her?”
    “No. I don’t know anything about her.” She shelved another book. “I’ll tell you one thing, though—Gilbert Reedy was a very strange man. His area of expertise was Elizabethan England, but he was obsessed with an obscure poet from the nineteenth century. He had a little book of sonnets he could quote by heart. He was convinced it held the key to true love. Like it had mystical powers. And then one day last week, he called me up and said he didn’t need me anymore. That was the way he put it. He didn’t need me. Can you imagine? How am I supposed to interpret that? And he was babbling about Ann, Ann, Ann. And good triumphing over evil. And he should have seen it sooner.”
    “What should he have seen sooner?” I asked her.
    “He didn’t say. He was on a rant, making no sense. If it was anyone else, I’d think they were on drugs, but Gilbert Reedy wouldn’t have any idea where to get drugs. He was a total academic. It was almost like dating me was a science