A Killing Spring Read Free Page B

cheek, we get a new star in our crown in heaven.”
    Alex raised an eyebrow. “Let’s hope she’s right. I have a feeling that before Reed Gallagher is finally laid to rest, his widow is going to give us a chance to build up quite a collection.”

CHAPTER
2
    Julie’s kitchen was the cleanest room I had ever seen. Everything in it was white and hard-scrubbed: the Italian tile on the floor, the Formica on the counters, the paint on the walls, the handsome Scandinavian furniture, and the appliances, which shone as brightly as they had the day they’d come out of their packing boxes. That morning my fifteen-year-old son had taped a sign above our sink: “Kitchen Staff No Longer Required to Wash Their Hands.” Somehow I couldn’t imagine Angus’s sign eliciting any chuckles in Julie’s kitchen.
    The telephone was on a small desk in the corner. Beside it, in a gold oval frame, was Julie and Reed Gallagher’s formal wedding portrait. They had been a handsome bridal couple. The week before the wedding, Reed had been invited to speak at a conference in Hilton Head. Judging from their tans, he and Julie had logged some major beach time in North Carolina. Against her white-blond hair and dark eyes, Julie’s bronzed skin had looked both startling and flattering. She had worn an ivory silk suit at her wedding. She had made it herself, just as she had sewn the ivory shirt Reedwore, dried the flowers that decorated the church, tied the bows of ivory satin ribbon at the end of each pew, and smoked the salmon for the hors-d’oeuvres. She had been attentive to every detail, except, apparently, her new husband’s appetite for unusual bedroom practices.
    I picked up the photograph. Reed Gallagher didn’t seem the type for kinky sex. He was a tall, heavy-set man, with an unapologetic fondness for hard liquor, red meat, and cigars. I’d met him only a few times, but I’d liked him. He took pleasure in being outrageous, and in the careful political climate of the university, his provocations had been refreshing. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen him. It had been in the Faculty Club at the beginning of the month. He’d been in the window room with Tom Kelsoe and my friend Jill Osiowy. They’d been celebrating Reed’s birthday with a bottle of wine and, as people always do when they’re celebrating, they had seemed immortal. I put down the photograph and started reading the names on Julie’s list.
    Twenty-four people had been invited to the party, and the first name was that of the guest of honour. I dialled Tom Kelsoe’s office number. There was still no answer. There was no one at his home either. I hung up and dialled the next number. I drew a blank there, too, but there was an answering machine, and I left a message that was factual but not forthcoming. As the hour wore on, I had plenty of opportunities to refine my message. Out of the seven couples and ten singles on the list, I was able to talk to only three people.
    One of those people was Jill Osiowy. She was an executive producer at Nationtv, but her concern when she heard the news of Reed’s death was less with getting the story to air than with making certain that she found Tom Kelsoe so that he would hear the news from her rather than from a stranger. Her anxiety about Tom’s reaction surprised me. In the years I’d known her, Jill had had many relationships, butnone of them had ever reached the point where a blow to the man in her life was a blow to her.
    Until she met Tom Kelsoe, Jill’s romantic history could be summarized in one sentence: she had lousy taste in men, but she was smart enough to know it. The fact that the deepest thing about any of the men who paraded through her life was either their tan or the blue of their eyes never fazed her. When she came upon the term “himbo” in a magazine article about the joys of the shallow man, Jill had faxed it to me with a note: “Thomas Aquinas says, ‘It’s a privilege to be an angel and a