Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) by Diane Patterson

Author:Diane Patterson [Patterson, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ALL NIGHT LONG I dreamed of watching Courtney die over and over while the cops stood around and didn’t pay attention. Roger Sabo and I sat on the bed in the motel room together, and he kept taking cannabis cigarettes from one of the nearby cops and passing them to me, saying, “You see how it is.”

My mouth felt cottony when I woke up, and I reminded myself to cut down on dream-smoking. I couldn’t figure out why Courtney’s death was affecting me so much. After all, I’d seen people die, up close and violently, starting with the man I killed, followed by the man I had let die (he was there to kill me, so I wasn’t motivated to save him from a long plunge into a frozen lake), followed by my first husband, David, who’d been killed in cold blood right in front of me. Since then there had been... I began counting on my fingers and when I raised my left hand for the second go-round I stopped counting.

Time to go find Stevie and get her to make everything all better. My body felt recovered enough that I could dress in something slightly dressier than the sweats and t-shirt combo I’d been wearing non-stop for a few days, so I put on the blouse with three-quarter sleeves (hid most of the bruise on one arm) and my linen Capris. I changed the belt from the stiff leather thing to the spongier fabric one though, in a concession to my stomach muscles.

The guest house was empty. I walked outside and found the garden was deserted. Stevie must have gone over with Gary’s medication.

The back door to Gary’s house was unlocked, as always. I poked my head inside and yelled, “Anybody home?”

“In here!” yelled a female voice.

A female voice that was decidedly not Stevie’s.

Gary and Randi were in the breakfast nook, which was a large and airy room off the kitchen that jutted out into the garden. Three walls made of glass, with stained glass running around the top of the panes. Gary sat facing out to the garden, looking deep in thought about something, wearing his big old dark blue bathrobe. Randi sat on the chair next to his, her dainty feet with their fancy pedicures in his lap and one hand draped on his shoulder. She wore a satin zebra-striped robe and kept whispering things at him. The clear glass teapot was on the table, next to a plate holding the last few slices of Stevie’s most recent baking adventure.

I put the smile on my face first. It’s the easiest way to put yourself in a good mood—put a smile on, and your brain interprets this as meaning you must be happy. Function follows form. You say fewer mean and cutting things that way. At least, that’s the theory, and I love theories of behavior.

“Good morning!” I said as brightly as I could manage. “Aren’t you two just the picture of a leisurely morning repast.”

“Would you care for a cuppa?” Gary asked.

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