Dead Sexy Read Free

that was between a sigh and a laugh. ‘I wouldn’t call it a relationship.’
    ‘You sound bitter.’
    ‘Oh, you know. I didn’t exactly want him in my life anyway.’
    Detective Mann leaned forward. His chair creaked. He reached out. It appeared as if he was about to stroke her knee. When he withdrew his hand a moment later and placed it back in his lap, she felt an inexplicable sense of disappointment mixed with relief.
    Mann sat up straight again, and folded his arms over his barrel-like chest. His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that why you topped him, Nicola? ‘Cause you didn’t want him in your life? Huh?’
    ‘I never topped him,’ she replied, confused. ‘He wouldn’t allow it. He always had to be the dominant one, even when he was—’
    ‘Topped, as in killed. Croaked. Knocked. Wiped.’
    Nicola’s jaw dropped. Tears sprung into her eyes. ‘Look, you’ve got it wrong…I didn’t kill him, all right? We had a…a date. When I left, I, uh, forgot something. I went back and found him there, you know, dead. That’s when I saw you.’ Taking off her glasses, she rubbed the lenses furiously on the sleeve of her blouse. She blinked up at Mann. ‘That’s the truth.’
    ‘I see,’ he drawled. ‘A date. And what did your fiancé think of your midnight
date
with Johnny B. Wright?’
    Although she herself had not long ago written that it was important to ‘Talk through Your Feelings with a Good Listener!’, Nicola was not prepared to workshop the state of her relationships with Detective Mann. ‘Who said I had a fiancé?’ she retorted, and immediately felt a stabbing pain of guilt, as though by denying Fox’s existence she’d betrayed him even more cruelly than when she was with Johnny.
    Mann grinned, and Nicola experienced a hair-raising sense of deja-vu, as though she had seen that grin somewhere before, her nightmares perhaps.
    ‘You might recall fainting back there? You dropped your bag, and your wallet fell out. There was a photo in it. Good-looking bloke.’
Looks like a pillow-biter.
‘Besides, you’ve been twisting your engagement ring round your finger like you’re tryin’ a open a jar a pickled onions.’ Mann pressed on. ‘So what’s his name?’
    ‘Fox.’
    ‘Fox.’ Da Mann grinned. ‘Crafty sort of bloke, is he?’
    ‘Not at all. He’s…’ What was she doing telling him about Fox? ‘Let’s leave him out of it, OK? He’s got nothing to do with this.’
    ‘You sound sure about that. But ya know, sweetheart, if I were him and you were making, what did you call it,
dates
with the notorious Johnny B. Wright at midnight, I might decide I didn’t
wanna
be left out of it. You say you didn’t kill Johnny. OK. Let’s say I choose to believe you. What makes you so sure that it wasn’t Fox then?’
    She tried to think fast, but her brain had lost its running shoes hours ago. Something Mann said stuck in her head. ‘Why do you say“notorious”?’ she asked cautiously, not certain that she wanted to hear the answer. ‘Did you know Johnny then?’
    Detective Mann snorted.
If you knew Johnny like I knew Johnny…
‘You’d be surprised at how many people knew Mr Wright. He got around a bit—in the biblical sense, if you get my drift.’
    She knew it. Johnny was
such
bad news. ‘Look, I don’t know who did it, but it wasn’t me. And it wasn’t Fox either.’
    ‘How can you be so sure?’
    ‘He’s working. He’s a fireman. He’s got a shift tonight and is staying over at the station. Feel free to check. It’s the one on Castlereagh Street. Anyway, how do you know it wasn’t self-inflicted?’
    ‘What, he cuffed his hands to the table then got up and slammed the door?’
    Nicola put her head in her hands. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with it.’ She looked up as if something had just occurred to her. ‘Don’t I get to make a phone call?’
    Mann raised his eyebrows and indicated the phone on the console with his chin. ‘Feel free. Press zero.’
    Nicola reached for