Dating Is Murder by Kozak Harley Jane

Author:Kozak, Harley Jane [Kozak, Harley Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: detective, Suspense
ISBN: 9780385510349
Publisher: Broadway
Published: 2005-03-01T07:00:00+00:00

23

I didn’t expect a call from Detective Cziemanski anytime soon, but he found me and my cell phone stuck in stop-and-go traffic on the 134 West, just past the 5.

“Guy named Yellin,” he said. “Sheriff’s Department in Lost Hills, he’s working the Rodriguez case. I gave him your number and he’ll get in touch. When did you say you met the Rodriguez kid?”

“Thursday, lunchtime.”

“So it’s not like you’re the last one to have seen him.”

“I don’t know much about Rico,” I said. “It’s Annika I know about, and her connection to Rico. Speaking of which, I have the license number of a guy that’s threatening this other guy, Bing, who knew Annika and possibly Rico, who-”

“All right, tell it to me, but it’s Yellin’s case now. I meant what I said, though, last night. About being friends. I’m feeling like a jerk about this whole thing.”

“No, it’s my fault. I should’ve met you a decade earlier.” Or had kids of my own that he could fall in love with. I should’ve gotten pregnant before Doc left. And gotten a college degree. Yes, it’s a lot to squeeze into a five-month relationship, but the race, as they say, is to the swift. “But it’s okay,” I said. “I’m always up for another friend.”

Generally, I see stopped traffic as an opportunity for manicure touch-ups, eyebrow tweezing, and the cleaning out of glove compartments and purses. Today I was preoccupied with failed math tests, missing boyfriends, jealous German girls, and blue-eyed men. If Britta had sold out Annika, reported her outdated Führungszeugnis to the agency, why hadn’t the agency reported it to the Quinns? Had Marty Otis blackmailed Annika? I pictured him calling her, scaring her, saying, “We’re on to you,” and Annika in her attic room, circling the date on her Führungszeugnis, thinking, I have to run. But why? How bad had it been, her trouble with the German police? And what could Marty Otis want from her? It’s not like she had money. And what did any of it have to do with Biological Clock? Or Rico’s disappearance?

Traffic inched toward Forest Lawn, whose inhabitants moved more slowly than we on the freeway only because they were dead. I noticed my mail scattered on the seat next to me, retrieved from my box on my way to the math test. I picked it up, sorted through bills and catalogs, then tossed it aside and picked up Annika’s pink file. On the back of her application, as Maizie had noticed, was another girl’s, this one from Thailand. Nootjaree “Noot” Chanaboon. She was adorable. I imagined Gene Quinn happily downloading au pairs from the Internet…

Uh-oh.

It was the woman at Miss Grusha’s music class who’d put this in my head. I didn’t want to be thinking this, about someone cheating on Maizie, a mom who made her own bread. And I didn’t want to think of Annika in an adulterous relationship. With her employer. The HMO doc. A man twice her age.

Grown men lusting after nubile babysitters is a cliché, but clichés are clichés because they happen so often.

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