Hot Rocks Read Free Page B

Lainie anymore. She was Laine Tavish, solid citizen.
    She eyed the bottle of wine and with a shrug poured a second glass. A grown woman could get toasted in her own kitchen, by God, especially when she’d watched a ghost from the past die at her feet.
    Carrying the glass, she walked to the mudroom door, to answer the hopeful whimpering on the other side.
    He came in like a cannon shot—a hairy, floppy-eared cannon shot. His paws planted themselves at her belly, and the long snout bumped her face before the tongue slurped out to cover her cheeks with wet and desperate affection.
    “Okay, okay! Happy to see you, too.” No matter how low her mood, a welcome home by Henry, the amazing hound, never failed to lift it.
    She’d sprung him from the joint, or so she liked to think. When she’d gone to the pound two years before, it had been with a puppy in mind. She’d always wanted a cute, gamboling little bundle she’d train from the ground up.
    But then she’d seen him—big, ungainly, stunningly homely with his mud-colored fur. A cross, she’d thought, between a bear and an anteater. And she’d been lost the minute he’d looked through the cage doors and into her eyes.
    Everybody deserves a chance, she’d thought, and so she sprang Henry from the joint. He’d never given her a reason to regret it. His love was absolute, so much so that he continued to look adoringly at her even when she filled his bowl with kibble.
    “Chow time, pal.”
    At the signal, Henry dipped his head into his bowl and got serious.
    She should eat, too. Something to sop up some of the wine, but she didn’t feel like it. Enough wine swimming around in her bloodstream and she wouldn’t be able to think, to wonder, to worry.
    She left the inner door open, but stepped into the mudroom to check the outside locks. A man could shimmy through the dog door, if he was determined to get in, but Henry would set up the alarm.
    He howled every time a car came up the lane, and though he would punish the intruder with slobber and delight—after he finished trembling in terror—she was never surprised by a visitor. And never, in her four years in Angel’s Gap, had she had any trouble at home, or at the shop.
    Until today, she reminded herself.
    She decided to lock the mudroom door after all, and let Henry out the front for his evening run.
    She thought about calling her mother, but what was the point? Her mother had a good, solid life now, with a good, solid man. She’d earned it. What point was there in breaking into that nice life and saying, “Hey, I ran into Uncle Willy today, and so did a Jeep Cherokee.”
    She took her wine with her upstairs. She’d fix herself a little dinner, take a hot bath, have an early night.
    She’d close the book on what had happened that day.
    Left it for you, he’d said, she remembered. Probably delirious. But if he’d left her anything, she didn’t want it.
    She already had everything she wanted.
     
     
     
    Max Gannon slipped the attendant a twenty for a look at the body. In Max’s experience a picture of Andrew Jack-son cut through red tape quicker than explanations and paperwork and more levels of bureaucracy.
    He’d gotten the bad news on Willy from the motel clerk at the Red Roof Inn where he’d tracked the slippery little bastard. The cops had already been there, but Max had invested the first twenty of the day for the room number and key.
    The cops hadn’t taken his clothes yet, nor from the looks of it done much of a search. Why would they on a traffic accident? But once they ID’d Willy, they’d be back and look a lot closer.
    Willy hadn’t unpacked, Max noted as he took stock of the room. Socks and underwear and two dress shirts were still neatly folded in the single Louis Vuitton bag. Willy had been a tidy one, and he’d loved his name brands.
    He’d hung a suit in the closet. Banker gray, single-breasted, Hugo Boss. A pair of black Ferragamo loafers, complete with shoe trees, sat neatly on the