Read Cold and Pure and Very Dead for Free Online Page A

Falls
. In no way was I prepared for the grim inflections that awaited me on the other end of the line.
    “Doctor.” Only one person in the world called me
Doctor
in that particular way, as if it were my given name.
    “Lieutenant Piotrowski?” The lieutenant was with the Massachusetts State Police Bureau of CriminalInvestigation. I hadn’t heard from the big cop since the completion of the homicide investigation that had brought him to the quiet Enfield campus last fall. At that time, my matchmaking friends Earlene Johnson and Jill Greenberg had gleefully predicted some amorous move on the part of Charlie Piotrowski, but if he was, indeed, interested, he had never followed through. It was just as well I hadn’t heard from him, I’d told myself. After I’d broken up with Tony, my long-lost, long-time love three years earlier, I’d vowed never, ever again, to get involved with another police officer. Living with a cop makes for a difficult life. Okay—living with a cop is hell.
    And by the somber tone of his voice, Piotrowski didn’t seem to be calling about Chinese and a flick.
    “I understand, Doctor,” the lieutenant said without social preamble, “that you are acquainted with a New York City journalist by the name of … ah … Martin Katz.”
    “Yes?”
Martin Katz?
What possible connection could this New England-based homicide detective have with the
New York Times
reporter? “Yes, Lieutenant, I’ve met Mr. Katz.”
    “Well, Doctor …” Piotrowski sighed: he’s a big man; he has large-capacity lungs; it was a long, slow sigh. “I just this minute got an official inquiry about you from the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation. It seems, Dr. Pelletier, that Mr. Katz has been murdered—and in circumstances that link him quite directly to you. I’ll probably get in deep shit for telling you this, but I wanted to prepare you: Doctor, you’re in for a visit from a couple of New York State Police homicide cops.”

W hen the brush parted
and Cookie appeared, Sara sighed with relief. It was only Cookie; she was safe. Her friend was sweaty and scratched, dressed in the dungarees and camp shirt Mrs. Wilson, Cookie’s mother, despised as unladylike. Sara herself had outgrown the one pair of blue jeans Cookie had passed down to her, and to buy another she was saving the money she earned running errands for Professor and Mrs. Wilson and serving at their parties. She envied her friend the easy way she dressed, her clothes always right for whatever they were doing, from school dances to crashing through the underbrush
.
    “Joe Rizzo was looking for you,” Cookie said. “I didn’t tell him you were up here.”
    “Thanks.” Sara smiled at her friend
.
    “But—I don’t understand why you never want to see him, Sar. He’s such a hunk. Handsome like a movie star is handsome.” Cookie sighed, leaned back against a big oak and slid down until her thin bottom rested on the ledge. Sara, more decorous, as her garb demanded, sat carefully next to her
.
    The two girls were a contrast in types. Sara was tall and willowy with hair like honey, a creamy complexion, and a body whose fullness belied her youth. Cookie sprang from a less extravagant branch of girlhood, her thin face and her acornlike breasts the despair of her young life. Cookie’s real name was Carole, but as an only child of doting parents she bore her pet name still
.
    “I don’t want to see him because …” Sara struggled for an expression that would not offend the innocence of her more protected friend. “Because I don’t … I don’t want to … to end up living my
mother’s life. I want to get out of Satan Mills. Someday I want to go to college … if I can. There must be a way.”
    “To live your mother’s life? But, Sara, I don’t understand. Your mother is old. She’s …”
    “She’s fat. She’s ugly. She’s piss poor. That’s all right. You can say it.”
    Cookie screwed up her face in