Caught Dead in Philadelphia by Gillian Roberts

Author:Gillian Roberts [Roberts, Gillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General
ISBN: 9781611872026
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2011-11-28T13:00:00+00:00

Ten

“Liza liked variety in men, didn’t she?” Mackenzie said, chitchatting his way through the traffic and tension. “Bayer is, in case you hadn’t noticed, somewhat different from Cole. From lawyer-legislator to baker’s assistant, whatever that might be.”

“That’s it!”

“What? What’s what?”

“Listen, Mackenzie, I have something to say. But I don’t know whether you’ll consider it reality or speculation, and I don’t feel like messing with you again. Could I be granted immunity to bumble around?”

“You’re a mean woman, Peppah.”

“I take it that means I may proceed. I’m sure Liza was with Eddie Sunday night after the show. But I couldn’t understand why she left so early. Except that bakeries tool up at dawn. That explains what she was doing wandering toward town at daybreak.”

Mackenzie smiled. “See? I’m not shoutin’ or stompin’ on you.”

“You’re not congratulating me, either.”

“Congratulations,” he said, after a pause.

We passed the blitz-blocks, the section of the City of Brotherly Love that had undergone urban renewal by police bombing. The new houses, looking a little embarrassed, were solid and resolutely middle-class. Also, I thought, a little more fortresslike than their unhappy predecessors.

We moved on and came to an area that looked as if it, too, had been bombed but never rehabilitated. Two houses in the row had boarded-up windows, and almost all of them had black spray-paint graffiti that made them look trapped in enormous nets. I have a hard time with people who call this form of vandalism art.

“I’m deputizin’ you,” Mackenzie said, surprising me. I tried to look nonchalant about his change of heart, to avoid dragging Nancy Drew’s name into our conversation again.

Mackenzie parked across the street from Eddie’s address. “Find out what he wants to say. Simple enough?”

I stared at the house. Its green porch railing was missing half its spokes. The steps were swaybacked and the patch of lawn in front was bald, except for discarded trash.

“This is the address he gave me,” Mackenzie said. “I’ll wait ten minutes. Then I’m comin’ in to talk to him.”

My deal had been to talk to Eddie at the cemetery, not behind walls in a rackety house. But I didn’t want to blow my new and shaky partnership with Mackenzie, or to reveal my true core of cowardice. I walked up the wooden steps, carefully testing for solid portions before putting down weight.

I wasn’t sure if the bell worked. In any case, nobody answered it. I knocked and waited, then knocked again. No answer. I did an extravagant pantomime asking whether I should wait, and Mackenzie gave me a thumbs-up sign from the car.

I sat down on the top step. To the left and right of me, porches echoed, and I tried to envision a warm summer night, with the whole block socializing in front of their houses. I think we lost a lot when we chucked porches. A patio or deck is not the same thing at all.

Two small children, one dark, one fair, both dirty, ran toward my steps. “You have to share!” the boy, the smaller of the two, screamed.

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