Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries)

Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) Read Free Page B

Book: Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) Read Free
Author: Diane Patterson
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back and forth. “Oh God oh God oh God.”  
    “Park, would you?” My stomach felt like crap.  
    The car thumped over the uneven curb cut into the Ralph’s parking lot. The jostling made me feel like I was going to vomit all over myself. “Park, and stop moving this car.”
    She parked the car. I don’t think she lined it up between the lines very well. L.A. drivers tend to be cavalier about following parking space recommendations.
    “Did you call the police?” I asked. My side was really starting to hurt.  
    “I have to call an ambulance!” she yelled. Anne was really sliding into hysteria now, with tears washing all over her face and her eyes scrunched up.  
    “An ambulance can wait. Call the—”  
    “You’re bleeding !”
    As soon as she said it, I tasted copper in my mouth. My fingers touched the corner of my lips and came away red. Dammit, I was bleeding. My teeth felt secure, though—it was probably a cut on the inside of my mouth. I wouldn’t be able to drink my coffee hot for a few days.
    Then I felt the trickle on my forehead and reached up to feel wetness. My fingertips were covered in a decent amount of blood.
    “Don’t worry,” I said. My words began to slur and I had to concentrate to keep using the right accent. Now would be a very bad time to start sounding like someone from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. “Head wounds always bleed the worst.”
    “Not that ,” she screamed, and then she pointed to my ribs. “ There .”  
    A large red spot had bloomed on the gray fabric of my sweater.  
    I licked my lips. “Stevie’s going to murder me if I ruin my clothes.”
    Then I stopped talking.

C HAPTER T WO

    EVENTUALLY THE PARAMEDICS cut the sweater off, so I no longer worried about whether Stevie would complain about the stains. When they lifted me out of Anne’s car, the passenger seat was painted with blood. I had enough awareness of what was going on to feel guilty about that.
    One of the paramedics was white and the other one was black and I still lost track of who was doing what. One of them gave me a few stitches in the side before the ambulance took me to a hospital. I told them I’d rather be treated in the Ralph’s parking lot, because frankly I’d had worse injuries that I’d left untreated and I’d rather not deal with hospitals. But no, they wanted to get x-rays of my side, because something, maybe a rough blade I hadn’t even seen in Roger’s hands, had given me a serious slice over my left ribs.  
    Anne had become hysterical at the sight of blood. Not being able to do anything while the paramedics worked on me made her incoherent. When she wasn’t allowed to come with me in the ambulance, she was crying so much I had to touch her hand to get her attention. I told her I’d text her to tell her what hospital I was at, and did she have anyone who could come get her to drive her home? For some reason, saying that made her completely lose it, so today’s lesson was that Anne could not deal with blood and violence. As my stretcher went into the ambulance, a police officer introduced himself and asked for a statement. My final words to Anne were, “Call your lawyer before saying anything, you idiot,” but she didn’t seem to hear me. Or perhaps I wasn’t saying them very well.
    I took my own advice to heart and called my lawyer from the ambulance. He said he’d come find me. Which meant, he was coming to take care of me.
    I love my lawyer. Not in a sexual way. That would just mess up what was a stunningly useful relationship for me.
    Obviously, I didn’t call Stevie. If I thought Anne was on the verge of madness about the fight and my injuries, my sister Stevie would have immediately entered a comatose state, reversible only by divine intervention. She had never dealt with my more serious altercations well, and there have been a fair number that have driven her into hysterics over the years. The moment she heard my mission to help Anne with a story had ended in a

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