The Golden Girl: A completely unputdownable crime thriller by Dana Perry

Author:Dana Perry [Perry, Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838882662
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2020-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

Thirty-Three

Before I’d left Billy Renfro’s wife in New Jersey, I got her to give me directions from Manhattan to their house. I checked first with the 22nd Precinct to see if Renfro had gone back to work, but they said he was still on sick leave. So I went to where Renfro lived in Queens.

The house was on a quiet, tree-lined street about a mile from the Long Island Expressway. Nice, but not ostentatious. Just middle-class American families. And how was your day at work? Fine, I shook down three people and made $1000 in bribes. Oh, good – now could you take out the garbage?

It was a white Cape Cod, with weather-beaten brown trim and shutters. I knocked on the front door. Nothing happened. Off in the distance, I could hear a dog barking. Somewhere I heard a car engine idling.

I walked around to the side and knocked on another door. Still nothing. From there I could see a large structure of some kind in Renfro’s backyard. I realized it was a boat. He’d been building a boat, probably the one he planned to sail in Florida as soon as he retired.

I walked back around to the front and tried the door there again, knocking as loudly as I could. Then I leaned over and peered in a window. No sign of movement inside the house.

“Hey, get outta there!” a shrill voice yelled.

I looked around and saw a middle-aged woman in a bathrobe and hair curlers sticking her head out of the door next door. She was scowling at me and shaking her fist.

I walked over to her porch and up to her door.

“Hi, I’m Jessie Tucker,” I said pleasantly. “I’m a reporter for the New York Tribune. I’m looking for Billy Renfro.”

“Haven’t seen him,” she said in the same shrill tone.

“Do you have any idea where I might find him?”

“No. Now please just go away. We don’t want any trouble around here.”

Then she slammed the door shut in my face.

I walked slowly back to Billy Renfro’s house and stood in the driveway looking at it. The dog had stopped barking, but I could still hear the engine running. It seemed close by. I looked around, but I couldn’t see it. It didn’t seem to be coming from the street anywhere. More like from inside Renfro’s house. Or from his garage.

I walked up to the garage door and listened. Sure enough, there was the sound of a car running inside. The garage door wasn’t locked, so I opened it and went in. I was only inside for a few seconds before I had to back out again, coughing and choking. It was long enough to know what had happened.

The lady next door shoved her head out again and saw me.

“What are you still doing here? I told you we don’t want any trouble in this neighborhood.”

“It’s too late for that,” I said, still trying to catch my breath.

“Huh?”

“You better call the police right away.”

I read once that death by carbon monoxide poisoning is the most pleasant way to go.

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