Read Murder in the Marketplace for Free Online

slept and slept on the bus, and now I’m sleepy again!” She looked at the sofa I was sitting on. “Is that a Hide-a-bed?”
    I got up. “Yes. I hope you’ll be comfortable there tonight, but you can use my bed for a nap. I’ve got some work to do in here.” My computer sat in the corner on an old library table. There were several writing projects in neat stacks around it; I had lots to do.
    “So I’ll sleep here tonight?” Amy looked, for a moment, lost and waifish.
    “Guess so. Before you nap, we’ll go call your parents.” She stuck that lower lip out again, but she didn’t say anything. I took my keys off the key rack by the door.
    “Where’s the phone?” She followed me out the door.
    “We’ll use Drake’s—he’s given me permission to do that. We’ll leave some money to pay for it. I don’t have a phone.”
    This, in Amy’s eyes, was an even bigger problem than the smallness of my house. She marveled over it all the way across Drake’s yard. I opened the back door and let us into his kitchen. It was larger than mine and full of implements that hung from the ceiling and bulged from the cabinets.
    Amy’s mother answered—I could tell by the high-pitched, frantic quacking that came out of the phone when Amy identified herself. She rolled her eyes at me while she tried to get a word in edgewise. “Mom. Mom—I’m okay. Of course not! Mom, listen! I’m at Aunt Liz’s.” More quacking. “Liz. Yes, in California. I took the bus.” She scowled into the phone. “I didn’t tell anyone! She says I can stay. So I’m going to.” More than a hint of bravado colored her voice. She crossed her arms, cradling the receiver between ear and shoulder, and sullenly examined her chipped nail polish. “I’m going to get a job,” she said finally. More eye-rolling. At last she held the phone toward me. “She wants to talk to you.”
    I wasn’t well acquainted with my sister-in-law. She and Andy had gotten married not long before I did, and Amy’s birth had followed in six months or so. She had been very shrill about denouncing me, though, perhaps because all the flap over my marrying and quitting school had diverted attention from her “premature” eight-pound baby.
    Now her voice on the phone was frosty, as if I’d somehow enticed her daughter away. “You’ve offered Amy a place to stay for the summer?”
    "That’s tight, Renee.” Amy wandered around Drake’s kitchen and through the archway into the living room. “She’s spent all her money on the bus ticket, and I’m not too flush myself. She’s going to get a job, and if she can’t, I’ll front the money for her to get back home.”
    “Just what kind of job?” Renee didn’t sound overjoyed. “What kind of racket are you running there, Liz?”
    My patience began to seep away. “Look, Renee. Your daughter landed herself on me without a word of warning. You can come and get her or send her a plane ticket if you think she’s in danger. Believe me, I wouldn’t want a child of mine on the streets these days. I live very quietly, and a teenager is not my idea of a fun surprise, not to mention the expense. I don’t have a phone, and this call is costing me. If you have anything else to say, be brief. Otherwise, you have my address.”
    Amy came back into the kitchen in time to hear this. Her eyes rounded.
    “Settle your problems with Amy,” I said, exasperated. “I’m not in loco parentis, and I make no guarantees beyond offering her a clean bed and a sympathetic ear.”
    Renee was speechless for all of thirty seconds. “Well! Really, Liz, I hardly think after what you did that you can set yourself up as some kind of example for an impressionable sixteen-year-old. What makes you think you can deal with an incorrigible young girl? Andy will have a few things to say about this! You must—”
    At that point I gently cradled the phone.
    “You hung up on my mother.” Amy blinked. “She’ll just call right back, you