Ellipsis

Read Ellipsis for Free Online Page A

Book: Read Ellipsis for Free Online
Authors: Stephen Greenleaf
to be harassing Chandelier Wells, I decided to spend the morning probing the jealous rival. Jealousy is always a fertile field, and after a late night contemplating Jill and my birthday, I didn’t have enough energy to go up against domestic outrage.
    Viveca Dane lived on Francisco Street a block west of Columbus. The house was a tidy two-story stucco number typical of the city’s residential districts, although this one possessed some grass and some shrubbery in contrast to its more barren brethren out in the avenues. I should probably have called first, but people are more likely to be helpful if they’re knocked a bit off-balance when I show up at the door like a Mormon.
    I had rung the bell four times and made ready to retreat down the stairs when the door squeaked open at my back. “What do you want?” a husky voice demanded in the middle of an audible yawn. After it coughed to clear itself of a stew of congestion, it swore like a trucker in traffic. “Nothing happens in here before noon.”
    I turned to see a small woman, wiry and wired, age well over sixty, hair spectacularly awry, skin creased and crisscrossed with wrinkles but untouched by anything other than age. Her hair was artificially blonde, her eyes chocolate truffles afloat in a dish of sour cream, her fingers a fistful of knotted twigs curled in arthritic arcs. She wore a royal blue housecoat that looked to be in its second decade of use and white silk slippers she could have worn to a ball. She was obviously irritated at being disturbed at that hour, even though it was after ten o’clock.
    â€œI said what do you want?” she repeated in a sandpaper voice that had seen a lot of smoke and a lot of straight booze during a lot of late nights in a lot of dark bars.
    I tried to look charming but it’s not my best guise. “My name is Tanner. I’m a private investigator. I’d like to—”
    Her frown turned from surly to thoughtful. “I’ve heard of you, haven’t I?”
    â€œCould be.”
    â€œYou got shot a year or so back. Along with some policemen.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œYou killed a policeman yourself that night, as I remember.”
    I felt myself color. “Yes, I did.”
    â€œSo why aren’t you in jail?”
    There was a lot I could have said to that, but what I chose to say was, “It was self-defense.”
    â€œSays who?”
    â€œThe district attorney.”
    She cocked her head in the universal mark of the skeptic. “Lucky you.”
    I remembered my best friend’s body, its last seconds of life leaching toward death in a scruffy, vacant lot down by the bay from the bullet I’d put in his chest. And I remembered precisely how it felt to have done it. “Lucky me.”
    She folded her arms across her wool-wrapped chest. “So why are you here? Am I being investigated for something?”
    I raised a brow. “Should you be?”
    Her eyes twinkled and blinked and squinted. “Only for my fantasies these days, I’m sorry to say.”
    â€œI hear your fantasies have made you lots of money over the years. And lots of fans as well.”
    She was pleasantly surprised and showed it. “You know my work, Mr. Tanner?”
    She seemed likely to quiz me about it, so I stemmed the urge to lie. “I know your reputation.”
    Her laugh was brassy and sarcastic. “You’re twenty years too late for my best moves, big boy—my reputation has mellowed to the consistency of tapioca. But in my prime, well, you could have burned your tongue on my reputation, don’t think you couldn’t. And a few other items as well.”
    I smiled. “Too hot to handle, I guess.”
    She tossed me a hip with the panache of a New Orleans stripper. “When I choose to be. But once in a while, if the right man comes along and treats me the way I like to be treated, I can be as smooth as Baileys Irish

Similar Books

Enemy of Rome

Douglas Jackson

Every Last Breath

Jessica Gaffney

Undone

Karin Slaughter

Felix and the Red Rats

James Norcliffe

Father and Son

Marcos Giralt Torrente

Undercover Engagement

Lucy McConnell

The Machine

Joe Posnanski