Read Aurora 08 - Poppy Done To Death for Free Online

person.
    But somehow, the slipping and creeping, the surreptitiousness of it, the deceiving . . . well, I had to shrug and sigh all over again at my own censoriousness.
    Linda’s car, as I’d expected, was parked behind the doctor’s office. And there was a phalanx of vehicles in the parking lot. I was 98 percent sure that Linda was inside taking temperatures and blood pressures, just as she ought to be. I called my mother’s office and asked for Patty, and when she came to the phone, I told her my mother wouldn’t be in for the rest of the day.
    Patty replied in a puzzled sort of way, saying that my mother had already called her to let her know that very thing, and I laughed weakly. “Guess we got our signals crossed in all the confusion,” I said, and Patty said, “Um-hum” in a loathsomely skeptical way.
    That left the least palatable alternative.
    Linda and Patty were both strong women, veterans of the divorce wars, and both quite capable of making their own decisions. Romney Burns was neither of those things. Romney’s apartment was a duplex, and I spotted John David’s car immediately, parked in the neighbor’s driveway. I assumed the neighbors were at work and that this was John David’s way of casting up a smoke screen. How subtle.
    Romney was a lot younger than John David. Romney was— well, she had to be less than twenty-six, I rapidly figured. And she’d lost her father less than two years before. Sandy-haired and fair, Romney had shed the weight she’d carried in high school by the time she graduated from college and returned to Lawrenceton, where she’d gotten a poor-paying white-collar job in the financial aid office of the junior college. Mother had told me Romney was the financial aid officer’s assistant.
    I hoped they didn’t have any loan emergencies at Sparling Junior College today, because it looked like Romney was home.
    I took a deep and unwilling breath before knocking on the shabby door. I would rather have been pulling my eyebrow hairs out one by one than doing this.
    Naturally, Romney answered. Her light hair was a real mess, and she was clothed only in a bathrobe. It took her a second to recognize me, and when she did, she looked disgruntled. I hadn’t been her father’s favorite person, either.
    “What are you doing here?” she snapped. She had to realize that seeing John David’s sister-in-law at her door meant bad things.
    “John David needs to get his clothes on and get out here right now,” I said, abandoning any attempt to put a polite gloss on the situation.
    “Who?” she blustered, but she discarded that quickly. Then she straightened. “Well, maybe I better come, too, since I might be a member of the family before too long,” she said, both defensive and proud.
    “Oh bull,” I said. “This is the third place I tried to find John David, honey. Not the first.”
    I saw comprehension leak into her eyes as she struggled to maintain her position. “He loves me,” she said.
    “Right, that’s why you two are walking down Main Street arm in arm,” I said, and turned my back on her. The door slammed behind me. Big surprise.
    “What the hell is this about?” John David said when he joined me. He was put back together pretty well, as far as clothing goes, but his composure had big holes in it. John David had a more florid coloring than his father and brother, and fairer hair. He was a powerfully built man, and a handsome one. But I didn’t like him anymore, and in my eyes, he would always be ugly.
    “John David,” I said slowly, suddenly realizing I’d condemned myself to breaking the news.
    “How long have you been here?”
    “What business is it of yours?”
    We faced each other, standing by my car.
    “Believe me, it’s my business. Tell me.”
    John David was no fool, and he’d picked up on the undertone.
    “I’ve been here since I drove back from the office at eleven,” he said. His voice was even.
    “Now, you tell me what’s