Read Yellow Rose Mysteries 02 - A Wedding to Die For for Free Online Page B

guilt ball is back in my court. I was just kidding, anyway. Is the kid okay?”
    “She’s fine. Her parents are transferring her to a private facility this morning. By the way, Terry and I dropped off your car late last night.”
    “Thanks. Might need that today. So Terry helped you with your patient?” Terry Armstrong, also a psychologist, is Kate’s significant other.
    “Yes. He met me at the emergency room.”
    “You two should go into practice together,” I said.
    “Living in the same house is more than enough time spent in each other’s company. Not that I don’t adore him, but there’s such a thing as too much togetherness. So what happened after I left last evening?”
    I filled her in, excluding my own issues with one snarly police chief.
    “So Megan still wants you to find the birth mother?” she asked, sounding surprised.
    “Yes, but I’m consulting with Angel as soon as I can. Should have asked for his help when I came up empty in the first place. I guess pride isn’t so hard to swallow if you chew on it long enough.”
    Diva emerged and blinked her amber eyes several times. I rubbed under her chin with my free hand.
    “Sure you still want to do this job? Megan’s a sweetheart, but the rest of the family? I don’t know, Abby. Graham smelled like a bar at closing time, Holt kept looking at me like maybe we could get together after they got that inconvenient body out of the way, and the sisters? I think they have serious identity issues.”
    “Not all that pretty, huh?”
    “Not.”
    “Can you tell me about Sylvia?” I asked. “I was holed up in the laundry room with a guy meaner than a rodeo bull and about as talkative. I didn’t see what happened to her.”
    “She woke up pretty quick after fainting, but then started crying and carrying on—which is understandable. I heard from one of the paramedics that she got so hysterical they had to give her IV Valium in the ambulance.”
    “And she seemed like such a take-charge person. Guess not.”
    “You can never predict human behavior, Abby. Especially during times of stress.”
    “Okay, Doc. I bow to your superior knowledge.”
    She laughed. “And so you should. Seriously, it may simply have been seeing all that blood that got to her. I’m not too good with blood myself. Anyway, I called only to explain why I ran out on you yesterday. Terry’s up and hungry, so before he starts talking about kolaches or doughnuts, I better get some fruit and bran into him. Call me later.”
    She hung up. Poor Terry. A man who loved to eat as much as he did had no business getting mixed up with my sister. She juiced everything imaginable, even ears of corn, and bought seeds and nuts and vegetables no ordinary person had ever heard of. But Terry surely had psychoanalyzed himself enough to understand his unconscious motivation to subject himself to torture.
    Phone still in hand, I checked the clock. Eight A.M. Angel would be awake. I had his home number on speed dial and he answered on the second ring.
    “You get up this early, huh?” he said once we exchanged greetings.
    “Not usually. But that last case you gave me has proved tougher than I thought. And now there’s been complications. Any chance we could get together at your office and discuss it?”
    “I have a few rules about the office. I never go there on the Lord’s day. You work as long as I have, you can make some rules.”
    “Tomorrow, then?” I asked, unable to hide my disappointment. If he helped me out today, gave me some hints on how to start this thing over, I could get busy Monday morning.
    “Hey, I didn’t say I don’t work on Sunday, I just avoid my damn office answering machine. Meet me at the pancake house—you know which one. Say, eleven o’clock after Mass?”
    “Okay.” I hung up, smiled, and settled back under the covers, Diva purring on my chest. I could sleep for two more hours.
    But not five minutes later I heard the doorbell. Who in hell was ringing my doorbell at