Read Ruff Way to Go for Free Online Page A

nodded.
    “So, again,
what happened to the note?”
    “I don’t
know. It blew away? The killer took it?” Despite the now unbearable heat in the
stuffy room, I hugged myself, my turmoil causing my midsection to do an
internal tap dance.
    This time I
was the one to lean forward and force him to meet my eyes. “Sergeant
Millay, all I know is, there was a note on a magenta colored sticky pad sheet
fastened to the front door when I got there. And, no matter how this might
look, I didn’t kill her.”
    He met my
gaze unflinchingly and gave me no external clues as to what he was thinking. “Okay.
Well.” He rose and bitched up his pants, which had slid slightly below waist
level on his pudgy frame. “Thank you. Let us know if you think of anything more
that might help us.”
    He gave me a
little smile, which I didn’t return. I had a feeling I would be seeing his
placid face in my nightmares.
    When I
stepped out of the interrogation room, it felt as though I’d taken my first
breath of air since this ordeal began. Mom was already standing by the door.
She was taking great care to align her Day-Timer in her purse to her
satisfaction. Straightening whatever objects happened to be on hand was
something she habitually did when she wanted to appear busy and unconcerned.
She’d likely done nothing but worry the entire time I’d been giving my
statement.
    We said
little during the drive home. It was now after seven p.m., and the sky at dusk was beginning to darken. My mom,
though, seems to have an ability to emit soothing vibrations at times like
these. That’s part of what makes her such a good
flight instructor. What hit me as most extraordinary, though, was that Mom had
to be bursting with anxious questions about what had happened right across the
street from her home, yet she managed to refrain from asking.
    Finally,
once we’d pulled into the garage, she said, “I get the feeling your session
with Andy didn’t go well.”
    “You mean
Sergeant Millay?” I asked, wanting to gently establish the fact that I did not
enjoy the same kinship with the man that she did.
    She nodded.
    “No. In
fact, it was awful.” I let out a sigh as I got out of the car and waited for
her. I held the door for her, and we went inside the house together. The garage
door opened to the kitchen, where our dogs were lined up to greet us. Pavlov,
my German shepherd, was first in line, with Doppler, my cocker spaniel, in the
middle. Mom’s collie, Sage, wagged his tail while I petted each dog in the
proper sequence according to their self-determined hierarchy. “I’ve never been
so scared in my life. I even feel guilty, though I did nothing wrong. It’s
as if every mean-spirited thing I’ve ever done in my life that’s gone
unpunished is now...sitting on my shoulders, mocking me.”
    Mom, showing
a bit of favoritism, gave Pavlov and Doppler a quick, cursory greeting, but was
now stroking her collie, Sage. “What have you ever done that went unpunished?”
    “Oh, there
was”—though a few things had immediately popped into my head, I realized that
there was no way I wanted to tell my mother, even though many years had
passed—“not a single thing, now that you mention it.”
    “Thought so,”
Mom said with a smile.
    Though she’d
managed to help me turn down my anxiety by a notch or two—aided greatly
by my being back home with my dogs—I now felt inordinately tired. I
dropped into one of the captain’s-style wooden chairs at the table.
    Mom pulled
out a chair beside me and took a seat. “Don’t worry about Andy.” In response to
my furrowed brow at her use of his first name, she said, “Sergeant Millay,
rather. He can’t possibly suspect you. You had no reason to kill Cassandra
Randon.”
    “True, but I’m
not going to sleep well till he catches whoever did this.”
    “Neither
will I. Nor will anyone else in the neighborhood.”
    Except,
perhaps, the killer. “Which is what bothers me the