One Fine Mess by Mark Petersen

Author:Mark Petersen [Petersen, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: funny, crime caper, crime comedy, female hero, female lead, funny mobsters, dark comdey, crime ficiton, absurd comedy, zany fun
Publisher: Mark Petersen
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

37

Days later, Jules’s cell phone trilled as she was grocery shopping at Shaws. When she saw who was calling, she felt her pulse bump up.

Oh, God.

She gripped the handle of her shopping cart. She debated not answering. That would be the smart thing to do. She felt her recent sense of triumph threatening to deflate. This was just going to be aggravating.

Not today.

Why should she . . . ?

Well, it had been nice to feel content for a little while.

“What do you want now?” she said into the phone at last. “I asked you nicely not to call anymore.”

“Did you?” Paige said. “That any way to treat your sweet baby sis?”

Jules’s wingnut sister, lately based in San Diego, was a heavy druggie. A loose cannon. Whenever the local Vermont cops used to pick her up, Paige would call Jules and claim she was merely holding something for a friend.

Jules had tried to help her baby sis before. How many other times had Jules answered her phone only to hear Paige’s complaints? One complaint after another. Someone had taken her car keys and was chasing her. Or she was spitting up blood. She’d split from rehab, but met a nice guy. That guy that had seemed so nice? Well, he’d hit her with a tire iron in a little dispute.

Jules had tried to pick Paige up every time the world knocked her flat on her ass. But Paige would do anything to run from withdrawal. “The sick,” she called it. For a while apparently, she was into back-to-backs—shooting smack, then smoking crack for a chaser. Otherwise, she was all about meth.

Jules thought about the choices people made in their lives. She could tell now from Paige’s irritated tone that she had not cleaned herself up. Who knew where the money Jules had wired her for rehab had really gone?

At times, Paige creeped Jules out even more than Eddie’s old partner, Kev Bates, had. Paige didn’t have horn tats. But Jules had no problem picturing her unleashing the gates of hell.

“You know,” Jules said now, “right now I’m shopping. I—”

“Yeah! Well, fuck you, Jules.”

Something else in Paige’s voice sent a chill rattling down Jules’s spine.

She and Wesley were in enough trouble as it was. Now, though, she had a sense of fault lines about to fracture out of control.

“I bet you’re so sorry to have Eddie gone,” Paige continued. “That one sure seems damn fishy.”

Jules felt her heart stop in mid-beat.

The bitch!

Always trying to stir up trouble. Paige had never seemed to get over the loss of their parents to a car accident on Route 7; Jules wasn’t sure she had herself either. Still, Paige thrived on turmoil. And hitting the pipe had unhinged her further.

But this? Had a crazy tweaker like her put two and two together about Eddie?

Jules stared at a frosty cooler door, trying to tamp down the little voice in her head that said that this call was the start of something really bad.

“I gotta go,” she said. “Got things to do.

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.