Death Under Glass by Jennifer McAndrews

Author:Jennifer McAndrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-05-27T04:00:00+00:00

* * *

“Oh, God, that’s so Nolan.” Diana rolled her eyes with such force she nearly toppled off the barstool.

The crowd at the Pour House, Wenwood’s single watering hole, wasn’t much of a crowd at all. A few long-term residents clustered at one end of the bar, elbows on its age-stained wood, eyes on the television above, showing a baseball game. At one of the four booths lining the wall opposite the bar, two couples shared a pitcher of beer and some manner of intense conversation.

Carrie, Diana, and I had taken our customary places at roughly the center of the bar and ordered our customary single glass of wine each.

I took a sip of my white, then said, “It’s not like I wanted to barge in on his interrogation or whatever. I just—”

“Oh, it wasn’t an interrogation,” Diana said.

“Okay, questioning,” I amended.

Carrie swirled the wine in her glass as though she were about to sip a more exclusive vintage than the House’s seven-dollar-per-liter red. “Yeah, questioning sounds more like something that could happen at home. Or in a coffee shop.”

But Diana leaned closer, pitched her voice low enough not to be overheard. “What I mean is, it wasn’t any kind of question and answer. It was a crime scene.”

“No no no no no.” Carrie held up a hand. “Don’t tell us anything that’s going to get you in trouble. If it’s official police business—”

“Don’t listen to her. This is exactly what I wanted to ask you about,” I said. “Tell us everything. What do you mean a crime scene? What happened?”

“It’s okay. It’s on the blotter. Public record, you know?” Diana paused to take a sip of wine, glance over her shoulder at the other patrons of the bar. “It will be in the news tomorrow. I just don’t want to be answering questions from all the benchwarmers here.”

“Fair enough.” I leaned in, Carrie doing the same, so our three heads formed a human cone of silence.

Diana rested an elbow on the bar, gazed at us both from beneath lowered brows. “So. Nolan’s been trying to get hold of Herb Gallo about the fire, right? But there was no answer at his house—at the door or over the phone. We’ve had a couple of uniforms checking during their shifts but there’s been nothing until this morning when they noticed”—she dropped her voice to a whisper—“a kind of a, you know, odor.”

“Oh my God,” Carrie and I said in unison.

I had met Herb Gallo only once, and in the brief exchange we had at the luncheonette I took him to be a kind man, a gentleman of the old guard. Guilt at thinking for even a second that he might have burned down the law office made me momentarily queasy. And an irritating lump lodged in my throat as I thought of that lovely man dying alone, his remains undiscovered for days. My heart squeezed with sorrow. For a moment I couldn’t meet Diana’s eyes and instead focused my attention on

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