Read Aurora 07 - Last Scene Alive for Free Online Page B

better, so I drove to my lunch engagement with Sally Allison with a lighter heart. Sally was waiting in the foyer of the restaurant, wearing her usual solid colors—today she sported a bronze silk blouse under a tan pants suit—and groping in her huge shoulder bag. She pulled out a phone and dialed while I watched. Holding up a finger to let me know she’d just be a minute, Sally told her adult son Perry to be sure to take his clothes by the cleaners that day. I raised my eyebrows, and Sally had the self-awareness to look a little embarrassed.
    “Once a mother, always a mother,” she said after she’d hung up.
    “Let’s get in line, unless you want to call someone else?”
    “No, I’ll turn it off during lunch,” she said bravely, and pressed a button. “When are you going to join the twenty-first century?”
    “I have a cell phone. I just don’t turn it on unless I want to call someone.”
    “But. . . but. . . it’s to use!”
    “Not if I don’t want to,” I said.
    Sally clearly loved her cell phone and, since she was a reporter, I could see that it would be a valuable tool for her. But to me, it was just a nuisance. I got too many phone calls as it was, without arranging for a way to get more.
    Sally told me all about Perry’s new girlfriend as we moved down the line. I got my tray from the stack, and my silverware, and ordered ice tea and beef tips over rice. I got my number and looked for a free table while Sally ordered. Beef ‘N More seemed quite crowded, and I wondered a little at that—but it was a popular place, especially with the noon business crowd.
    “See, these are movie people,” Sally hissed as she unloaded her tray and put her receipt faceup where the waitress could spot it when she brought our food. “Isn’t this something?”

    Even Sally, the toughest woman I knew, was dizzy with excitement about the damn movie.
    I remembered my good resolutions, and I managed not to look sour.
    “Where are they all staying?”
    “The Ramada out by the interstate, most of them,” Sally said after she put down her little packet of sweetener and stirred the powder vigorously into her tea. “That Celia Shaw has the Honeymoon Suite. But the director—-Joel Park Brooks—is renting Pinky Zelman’s house. I hope Pinky’s asking a lot of money, because I bet it won’t be in any great shape when he moves out.” Sally looked a little pleased, as if the prospect of writing a story about the director’s damage to Dr. Pincus Zelman’s house was a treat Sally had in store.
    Clearly, Sally was seeing stories, stories just lining up to be written. What a bonanza this was going to be for the Sentinel .
    “Are you going to watch them filming?” I asked.
    “Every chance I get. And they’ve hired me as a consultant.” Sally flushed with pride.
    “That makes sense. You did the best series of stories on the murders, after all.” Those stories had nearly bumped Sally up to a bigger paper in a bigger city, but somehow it just hadn’t happened. Now, Sally was in her late forties, and she no longer expected that someday she’d leave Lawrenceton, as far as I could tell.
    “Thanks, Roe.” Sally looked pensive for a moment, her square, handsome face crumpling around the eyes and mouth. “At least,” she said, less cheerfully, “now I can finally finish paying all Perry’s hospital bills.”
    “That’s great.” For the last few years, Perry had been doing very well, but I knew the bills for his treatment had been staggering. Sally had been whittling away at this debt. “Can we have a bill-burning, or some kind of celebration?”
    “I’d love it, but it would make Perry feel bad,” she said regretfully. “He hates to be reminded of the cost of all that help I gave him. As if I grudged it. It was worth every penny.”
    “Did Perry pay for any of it?” I regretted the question as soon as it left my lips.
    “No, it was my bill, and I paid it,” Sally said, after a moment’s hesitation. “And