Read Painting With Fire for Free Online

collected at the edges of her strokes and fell onto the couch.
    “They never visit.” She patted the dog on its small head. “I’ve threatened to leave all my money to Fifi here, but they still never visit.”
    She put Fifi back on the floor and he started to growl at Claudia again like it was somehow her fault.
    “You’re retired now?” she said, shaking out her leg, with the tiny dog once again holding onto the edge of her jeans with its miniature fangs. It leaned backward and tugged. Its small nails clack, clacked on the wooden floor.
    “Yes. I used to work in retail downtown selling perfume. What do you do?”
    “I’m in the process of deciding my next step on the career path,” Claudia said with a sigh and an uneasy nod. “I’m kinda lost.”
    “Laid off?”
    “Yep.”
    “Well, good luck to you.” Doris pulled her lips into a sympathetic frown lined by the remnants of bright pink lipstick. “Happens to a lot of people these days.”
    “Let me know if you hear of any good jobs,” Claudia said. “Maybe I’ll go back to school if I can decide what I want to do.”
    Doris gave a sympathetic nod.
    Claudia eyed her and quickly crossed her off her list. She was too small and frail. She tried to imagine her wielding a large metal object and attacking a man and envisioned her toppling over and breaking her hip.
    “That murder was nasty business, wasn’t it?” she said.
    Doris nodded. “They never caught the guy, did they? I keep telling the police it was Kevin, but they don’t listen.”
    “Kevin?”
    Claudia thought of the tall, lumbering teenage boy with the gut and the dark skin. He was always carrying around bags of fast food, McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King. Sometimes, he couldn’t wait to get into his mom’s apartment, before the bulging cheeks would appear. He was always chewing something and rarely spoke and when he did it was a mumble through mouthfuls.
    “Why Kevin?” Claudia asked.
    “I know it in my gut that boy is up to something,” Doris said, her gray eyebrows furrowing together. “These youngsters today, all rotten. Playing violent videogames, watching nasty videos. You can’t trust ‘em. Plus, when their kind started moving into the neighborhood, things started to get crazy around here.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Claudia leaned back and the hairs on the back of her neck started to bristle. She took a breath and tried to remember that calling out Doris for being a racist old bat wasn’t going to get her any clues. She inhaled uneasily with a loud breath.
    “Nothing,” Doris said flatly.
    “Did you actually hear or see anything that night to make you think it was him?” Claudia said, leaning away in her seat.
    “I didn’t hear nothing, but that’s not saying much. I usually take out my hearing aid at night. It’s pretty inconspicuous isn’t it,” she said, proudly tapping a bulging piece of nude-colored plastic lodged inside her ear.
    “Yeah, it is,” Claudia said, swallowing. “Well, Doris, I’d better be going.”
    “Come back anytime,” she said eagerly with a big, lonely smile. “Bring your husband, too.”
    Claudia cringed as she walked out the door with her shoulders up to her ears.
    “He’s not my husband.”
    Doris opened her mouth and let out a judgmental “oh.”
    It reminded Claudia of the argument she kept having on the phone with her mother. “You’re living with a man? Why don’t you two just get married?”
    “Mom, we’re not even dating,” she would say. “He has a girlfriend.”
    Well, at least he had a girlfriend before they moved in and he had had a few short-term girls since then, off and on, so it was usually the truth and not a lie.
    “I swear there’s nothing between us,” Claudia told her over and over again. “We are just good friends, roommates, that’s all. He’s like a brother to me.”
    If you say something a thousand times, it start s to sink in eventually, right?
    Unfortunately, her mother