Father’s Day Murder Read Free Page B

trundled her suitcase around the bus and gave it to the driver, who stowed it in the baggage compartment, and bought her ticket. He punched it when he gave it to her, telling her she would need it when she de-barked in Boston. Then she climbed on board and took a seat next to a window. The driver clambered aboard, released the brakes, which gave a huge hiss, and they began to roll.
    Alone in her seat, Lucy reached for her cell phone. Things had been so confused when she left that she wanted to make sure everything was all right. Maybe she could catch Bill, just to touch base and let him know she’d left the hotel phone number on the refrigerator. Or Toby, to tell him that his father wasn’t really angry at him; he had just been upset about the shed collapsing. Or she could call Zoe, at her friend Sadie’s house, just to say good-bye and remind her to be a good girl.
    Lucy was fingering the phone, trying to decide which number to call, when the bus began the long climb past Red Top Hill and on toward the interstate. From where she sat she had a clear view of the little New England town with its white church steeples rising above the leafy green trees and the Main Street shops with the sparkling blue harbor beyond.
    It looked, she thought, like a picture postcard. Or the opening scene from a movie. The credits had finished rolling, the heroine had boarded the bus leaving her small-town past behind her, and the adventure was about to begin.

Chapter Three
    L ucy’s first stop when the bus finally pulled into South Station six hours later was to find the ladies’ room. Then, with face and hands freshly washed, hair combed, and a fresh application of lipstick, she went out to find a taxi. The city air, heavy with the pungent exhaust of diesel engines, made her eyes sting, and she felt a little pang of homesickness for Tinker’s Cove, where the ocean breezes kept the air sweet and fresh.
    â€œPark Plaza Hotel,” she told the cabbie, who immediately started the meter. Shocked at the amount it already showed and remembering Ted’s admonition that she had to watch her spending, she asked if it was a long trip.
    â€œNah,” he said, pulling away from the curb. “Sunday evenings there’s not much traffic. It should be quick.”
    Relieved on that score, Lucy leaned back in her seat and prepared to enjoy getting reacquainted with the city. Boston, she knew, was one of the nation’s oldest towns and was filled with treasures like Faneuil Hall, Old Ironsides, and Paul Revere’s house, though Bill maintained there wasn’t really much of the original structure left in the Revere house, and she supposed that since he was a restoration carpenter he would know.
    She and Bill had brought the kids into the city a few times over the years, to see Red Sox games at Fenway Park and to visit the Museum of Science, the New England Aquarium, and other attractions, but each trip had been a tense exercise in map reading as they tried to find their way through a maze of unfamiliar roads filled with notoriously unpredictable Boston drivers who considered using a turn signal tantamount to giving away a state secret. Most traumatic of all had been their trip last fall to bring Elizabeth to Chamberlain College, when the stress of the city driving had been compounded by the emotional trauma of separation. Lucy had fought tears for the entire trip, and had hardly noticed her surroundings.
    Today, however, she was buoyed by a sense of adventure and looked around eagerly, hoping to spot a familiar landmark. Instead she was dismayed to see that more of the roadways had a makeshift appearance and were lined with long chains of scarred concrete Jersey barriers.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” she asked, remembering the cranes and numerous road construction projects she’d observed from the bus. “These roads are a mess.”
    â€œYou said it, lady. They call it the Big Dig, but the Big