Earthly Delights by Kerry Greenwood

Author:Kerry Greenwood
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2011-01-18T15:38:46+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Only extreme control suppressed my yelp. How is it that some women are attracted only to the man who is guaranteed to do them the most harm? If Goss’s Lestat was the same person as Daniel’s Lestat then I had to say something. But what? Any indication that he was dangerous would just make him more attractive. I stacked the bread for the carrier at the door and tried to think.

Then, of all things, the newspaper rescued me. Goss regulates her whole life by the astrology column in the daily astonisher and she was reading it and frowning.

‘Shit,’ she said in a low voice.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

‘It says this is a bad time to make new friends,’ she said, pointing out the advice for Libra. ‘So I’ll have to see him another time.’

‘Can you contact him?’ I asked. She gave me that ‘what was it like in the fourteenth century, anyway?’ look to which I had become accustomed.

‘Mobile number,’ she said.

151

Unobtrusively, I watched over her shoulder as she called up the address book in her phone and, while she tapped it in, I wrote the number down on the top of a pile of paper bags. I then folded the bag and put it in my pocket. It is uncool to talk on a mobile phone these days. Uncool travels fast in these days of amazing technological advances. I remember when Sony Walkmen were the epitome of cool. And I rode a stegosaurus to school, as Goss might have said. I remember when video recorders were the coolest thing. Nowadays if you haven’t got DVD you are prehistoric.

Goss sent a text message. Her fingers flew. I was impressed. In the old days Goss would have made a wonderful morse code operator.

We settled down to sell bread. For a Monday, we did quite well.

Everything proceeded. I told Goss about Andy Holliday and his missing daughter and she was round-eyed with sympathy. I asked her if she had heard the name Cherie Holliday. She shook her head. Her hair was blue today, and flew around her face.

‘But she wouldn’t be calling herself that,’ she said. ‘Not if she went off in such a snit. I mean, her uncle was … doing what she said. Her dad didn’t believe her. She must have felt, like, gutted. She just went off into the night and he never saw her again and now he knows that she told the truth and he can’t tell her. That’s the saddest thing I ever heard.’ There were tears in her eyes. They did her credit. This from a girl who had hounded a recovering heroin addict out of the shop. The young have such cheap, hard judgment, as Irene said in Galsworthy long ago. I decided to press my luck.

‘So, when I get the flyers printed, will you help me spread them round?’ I asked, expecting the answer ‘as if’. But Goss revealed hidden depths of compassion.

‘Sure. We can tape them onto lampposts, I always read the stuff on lampposts.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.