ER - A Murder Too Personal Read Free Page A

apartment. Their faces weren’t more than a foot apart. They
clutched each other’s hands and the intensity of his gaze would
have been enough to scald her on the spot.
    I brought the subject up first. “About
Alicia…,” I said.
    “What do you wanna know, old buddy?”
    “Tell me what you know about what she was
doing.”
    He shrugged. “Cops came to see me too. Not
too much I could tell them about her. I just saw her once or twice
a year. At parties, mutual friends, that kind of thing, you
know.”
    He stopped talking and stared at the
waitress’ breasts as she came to the table. Her body was fleshy but
her waist was trim, so she carried some extra inches around her
bust and hips. Her breasts were well-rounded and they swung forward
as she bent over to pour our beers. She was wearing one of those
barely-visible bras, more for support than for coverage. Her thin
white cotton blouse didn’t hide very much.
    She finished pouring and straightened up,
flashing a bright smile, first at Tanner and then at me.
    “Care for some more peanuts?” she asked.
    “You sure are one hell of a waitress,” Tanner
said.
    She tossed her head and ran her fingers
through her spun-copper hair. “I’m not really a waitress. I’m
studying law at Fordham. Next year this time, I’ll be a
lawyer.”
    Tanner and I exchanged glances. He scratched
his head and said, “Not a waitress. Well, I’ll bet you’ll be a hell
of a lawyer. Give me your number. I’m going to need a good lawyer
sooner rather than later.”
    She laughed and tossed her hair again. She
wasn’t pretty but she had the kind of submissive air a lot of men
like.
    “I won’t have the same number when I start to
practice law. I’m going back home to Boston.”
    “Shame it is,” Tanner said as she walked
away, his eyes studying her backside.
    “About Alicia,” I prodded him.
    He considered for a minute. “I don’t know too
much about her life now. It consisted mostly of her job from what I
could see. You know how she was. She always put herself into her
work, body and soul. She didn’t have time for too much else.”
    I took a swallow of beer. It felt good and
cold going down. “How was her work going?”
    He shrugged and said, “I dunno. Hard to
tell—difficult to say. She never told me anything about it.”
    Then I asked the sixty-four dollar question.
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
    He polished off his beer and swiveled his
head around searching for an instant refill. “Yup,” he nodded, “if
it’s the same one I knew. A guy named Chisolm.”
    “What does he do?”
    “He’s chairman of a company called Insignia
Biotech in Norwalk. A solid, substantial citizen.”
    I knew what he was referring to. “How long
had they been going out?”
    “Maybe a year, I think.”
    “Did she ever talk about him?”
    “She once told me he satisfied her
needs.”
    “What the hell does that mean?” I said.
    “She didn’t go into any details,” Tanner
said. “You knew her. She was a gal who didn’t like to talk a lot—to
open up, you know.”
    I nodded.
    I remembered.

CHAPTER IV
     
     
    The morning of her funeral was clear. There
wasn’t a cloud in sight. The sun was so bright it reminded you of
the way the sky looks on a summertime afternoon in Spain. Colors so
vivid and whites like titanium dioxide whitewash on a canvas.
    There were maybe thirty people at the
cemetery—mostly expensively-dressed, well-coifed professionals
wearing Swiss watches and English shoes. People like herself. They
were probably her friends and co-workers.
    I recognized three or four of her family
members. They didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for me. As a
matter of fact, they studiously ignored me, preferring instead to
inspect the groundskeeper’s craftsmanship. Tanner was there. He
flashed a silent salute when he saw me.
    Why was I there?
    I owed it to her. For sure, I damn well owed
it to her. If I had said yes to her plea, would she still be alive?
If I had helped