Deadly Deceptions Read Free Page B

had gone on to the great beyond. Now he only haunted my memory.
    My throat tightened as I grabbed the carafe off the coffeemaker, rinsed it at the sink and began the brewing process. I heard Tucker drag back a chair at the table behind me and sink into it.
    â€œYou’ve seen her again,” he said. “Gillian, I mean.”
    I nodded without looking back at him. I couldn’t, just then, because my eyes were burning with tears. “She was at the funeral.”
    Tucker didn’t throw a net over me, for my own safety and that of others, or anything like that. He was the most rational man I’d ever known, and his brain was heavily weighted to the left, but as a child, he’d had an experience with a ghost himself. He’d believed me when I told him about seeing Nick, and Gillian, too.
    I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t.
    â€œShe doesn’t talk, Tuck,” I said, groping to assemble the coffee. Open the can, spoon in ground java beans.
    â€œShe wouldn’t,” Tucker answered. “She was a deaf-mute.”
    I turned, staring at him, forgetting all about my wet eyes. He got up, took the carafe from my hands, poured the water into the top of the coffeemaker and pushed the button.
    â€œI guess that shoots the theory that people leave their disabilities behind when they die,” he said when I couldn’t get a word out of my mouth.
    â€œThere’s apparently some kind of transition phase for some people,” I replied when I was sure my voice box hadn’t seized and rusted. “In between death and whatever comes next, that is.” I paused, moved away from him to get two mugs down off a cupboard shelf and rinse them out with hot water. “Why didn’t you tell me Gillian couldn’t hear or speak?”
    Tucker leaned against the counter, his arms folded, the ancient coffeemaker chortling and surging behind him, like a rocket trying to take off but not quite having the momentum. Tilting his head slightly to one side, he answered, “It didn’t come up, Moje. We haven’t talked that much lately.”
    â€œShe didn’t see who killed her,” I told him. “God, I hope it was quick—that she didn’t suffer, or have time to be scared.” I finally faced him. “Tucker, was she—was she—she wasn’t—”
    â€œShe wasn’t molested,” Tucker said.
    Relief swept through me with such force that my knees threatened to give out, and Tucker crossed the room in a couple of strides, took me by the shoulders and lowered me gently into a chair.
    â€œHow did she die?” I asked very softly. I didn’t want to know, but at the same time I had to, or I was going to go crazy speculating.
    Tucker crouched in front of my chair, holding both my hands in his. The pads of his thumbs felt only too good, chafing the centers of my palms. “You can’t tell anybody, Moje,” he said. “That’s really important.”
    I knew that. I’d read The Damn Fool’s Guide to Criminal Investigation. The police always keep certain pertinent details of any crime under wraps, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the danger of compromising the case if word gets out before the trial.
    â€œTell me,” I said.
    â€œGillian was strangled,” he told me. “With a piece of thin wire.”
    I swayed in my chair. “Oh, my God—”
    â€œAccording to the ME, it happened quickly,” Tucker said, but he looked as though he was thinking the same thing I was.
    Not quickly enough.
    â€œYou’re sure she ruled out the stepfather?” he asked when I didn’t say anything.
    I nodded. “I asked her twice.”
    â€œMoje,” Tucker told me after rising from his haunches and taking a chair near mine, “he has an arrest record. Vince Erland, I mean. Solicitation of a minor—sexual context.”
    My stomach roiled. I slapped a hand