A secret Rage by Charlaine Harris

Author:Charlaine Harris [Harris, Charlaine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0100-12-31T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

THE NEXT DAYBARBARA ANDIHAD ANOTHER grim little meeting. This time I went to her apartment. Like her office, it was crammed, but even more pleasantly—full of plants and books and clear, mild colors.

“Do you like it here?” I asked as she made some hot chocolate in her tiny kitchen. The building was a four-unit cube tucked in between private homes on a dead-end street. Someone with an empty lot had decided to make a little extra money—prezoning, of course!

“It’s okay,” she said as she got mugs from a cabinet. “I like having other people in the same building, now. I never liked that before.”

We settled in the little living room with our steaming mugs. We talked of this and that, awkwardly. Apparently Barbara was as reluctant as I to buckle down to our task.

“I’m getting almost too frightened to go on with this, Nickie,” she said abruptly. “I don’t know if fear douses the rage or just replaces it. I can only hold so much.”

“I’ve about reached my capacity, too,” I admitted. “Everything’s changed since Alicia was murdered.”

“We’d better do it before we lose our courage. Let’s try to take one more step.” We seemed to gather ourselves in unison before we hauled out our creased bits of paper.

“The list,” Barbara said as clearly as if she were reciting poetry. “Jeff Simmons. Charles Seward. Don Houghton. Randy Marquette. Theo Cochran. Ray Merritt. Dan Kirby. John Tendall. J. R. Smith.”

“What happened to Jeffrey Tabor?”

“I remembered Jeffrey was definitely out of town the night of Mimi’s party. That’s why he couldn’t come to it. I didn’t just take his word for it,” Barbara said with a faint smile. “I asked his friend who shares his apartment.”

“So that leaves nine.”

“Did Alicia know J. R., Dan, or Randy?” Barbara asked.

“I don’t know, Barbara. How could we find out?”

She looked rather daunted. “Well, we can’t ask them, can we? Gosh.”

“Let’s see. Dan’s new at Houghton, and he commutes from Hill Run, he told me. He just got out of the army. I think his wife’s family is in Hill Run. He’s from Arkansas. So the chances are very slim that Alicia knew him.”

Barbara weighed that. Then, after an emphatic shove at her glasses, she crossed Dan Kirby’s name off her list.

“Minus Dan,” she said. “Eight.”

I scooted down in my armchair and laced my fingers over my stomach. Barbara twirled her pencil between her fingers as though it was a miniature baton. We both brooded over other possible eliminators. So suddenly that I jumped, Barbara grabbed her telephone and dialed.

“Hi, J. R.,” she said. “This is Barbara Tucker. Fine, thanks…and you? Good, good. Listen, how’d you come out in that poker game?”

J. R. answered at length. Barbara rolled her eyes in exasperation, then instantly switched to a smile so the words would come out right when she spoke. “Great! Thirty-four dollars, huh? Did Randy play? Oh. Oh, Cindy won’t like that, you’re right!” Barbara widened her eyes at me significantly. “You played that late?” she burbled into the phone in a very un-Barbara-like manner.

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