Hot Shot by Gary Ruffin

Author:Gary Ruffin [RUFFIN, GARY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, crime fiction
ISBN: 9781468303049
Publisher: ABRAMS, Inc. (Ignition)
Published: 2012-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

32

I WAS GLAD THAT PENNY AND I HAD DRIVEN TO THE RESTAURANT SEPARATELY. The thought of driving her home in the state she was in made my stomach churn.

The look in her eyes was something I had never seen before, and the tone of her voice was too—cold, hard, and mean. The woman who had just chewed me out on the boardwalk wasn’t the Penny I knew and loved. This was a completely different lady. Something definitely had changed in the last few days.

Once when we broke up, she drove all night to her parents’ house and stayed a week, never even bothering to make contact until she returned to Gulf and called in sick to work. I was so mad at her, I briefly considered firing her, but who was I going to find in town that could do her job as well as she could?

When she finally showed up for work, we both acted as if nothing had happened. That was as mad as I’d ever seen her, until tonight. I wondered if she’d show up for work tomorrow as I turned into my apartment lot, and parked the cruiser.

Inside, the first thing I did was position my gun on the bedside table in case I had more nighttime visitors. Then I made sure everything was locked up tight, and looked in the closets before I took a deep breath and relaxed. A quick check of the bathroom medicine cabinet confirmed my fear that there were no Tums to be had, so I went into the kitchen and got the baking soda out of the fridge. Old soda that’s been absorbing all those refrigerator odors tastes pretty bad, but after mixing a half-spoonful with water and guzzling it, my bilious stomach settled down.

The old Lazyboy beside the couch called out to me, and I lay back in it and stared at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the last few hours. Penny had replaced Shelley for a while as my main concern, so that was one positive. If I had been alone in New Orleans, my obsession with Shelley’s welfare might have been unbearable. Relaxing in my old chair helped a little.

I thought about the night, ten or so years ago, when I was channel-surfing and came across a TV show about a poor family that lived on a mountain during the Depression. It was a big family, lots of kids and the parents and grandparents all living together.

The son was having trouble with his girlfriend, and asked his father to explain women to him.

The conversation went something like this:

“Pa, I just don’t understand why Janie would act this way. Is there a secret to handling women? I mean, what do they want?”

“Son, there’s only one thing you need to know about women.”

“What’s that, Pa?”

“I don’t know, son.”

That pretty much sums it up.

Another thought that entered my mind was how different things would have turned out if Solly had been there when the intruders came. I laughed

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