Read Suicide King (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series) for Free Online Page B

which is one of my favorite towns, but things weren’t going very well.
    I’d been through Lee’s moods before and we’d worked around them okay. They were usually connected with work. But this time was different. She didn’t complain about a judge or the work-load distribution at her law firm. She said she was fine and work was fine. She insisted that I tell her all about the case I was working on. I told her.
    “How do you feel about the party?” she asked quietly.
    I hesitated. “They seem like a good bunch of people. Dedicated.”
    “How do you feel about their dedication?”
    What was she after, anyway? I looked at her, trying to figure it out, but she wasn’t looking at me, so I couldn’t pick anything up.
    “It’s a good cause. I think their dedication is admirable.” The waiter appeared to take our order. We both went with the Pacific red snapper.
    “So you think their dedication is admirable,” she said, picking up where we’d left off.
    “Yeah. What do you want me to say?” I was trying not to get annoyed. “That I’m upset by what’s happening to the world? Of course I am.”
    “Do you know,” she said deliberately, “that one refinery dumps millions of gallons of chemical poison into San Francisco Bay every day?”
    “Well, yes,” I said, slugging down half a bottle of beer. “As a matter of fact, I do know that. And do you know that they monitor that shit by means of some kind of fish that could live in a tank of Lysol? Because when they use other kinds of fish they get something like 95 percent dead ones? I read that in the paper or something. Maybe it was on TV. It was one of those what-the-hell’s-going-on-here stories you never hear anything about again. You want me to say I can’t believe these disgusting things are really going on? I can’t. Okay?”
    “What are you doing about it?”
    I finished my beer, glaring at her. “I send money to every environmental group that sends me a letter. And I don’t use poison on my property.” She looked at me for a long time. The fish arrived. We began to eat. Fish had not turned out to be a good choice.
    Lee had recently joined a group that was trying to protect the Russian River, a source of recreation and drinking water in Sonoma County, from sewage-dumping by the city of Santa Rosa. Her involvement in this admittedly good cause had made it even harder to get together. I understood that what she was doing was important. What I had not understood was that it was going to make her smug.
    “That’s good,” she said finally. “But what are you doing about it?”
    I pushed some fish around my plate. She continued to eat. “I don’t join groups, Lee. I don’t get personally involved in causes. I don’t mess with politics. What I do is I solve murders. Murder-solving takes a lot out of me. And I give what I can.”
    “I suppose you do,” she said.
    I ordered another beer. I didn’t feel like eating. Lee finished her dinner.
    Back in the Chevy, before I had a chance to turn the key in the ignition, she put her hand on my shoulder.
    “Jake? I’m sorry. I just don’t think I’m in the mood to be with anyone tonight. I need to do some thinking. Okay?”
    “Sure. I’ll take you home.” I was disappointed, pissed off, and relieved that we weren’t going to try to stretch this misery over a whole evening. I knew we should be trying to talk. About something. But she didn’t seem inclined to, and I thought it might be best just to let things slide for a few days.
    I walked her up to her door, kissed her on the cheek, and told her I’d call her around the end of the week if that was okay. She gave me a quick kiss on the lips and said that would be fine.
    I drove out of Petaluma, down 101 to Marin and the San Rafael-Richmond bridge that would take me across to the East Bay, trying not to think. I didn’t succeed. I was thinking about dedication. Chicago, 1968, the Democratic Convention. Politics on both sides. The mayor a petty