Snipped in the Bud Read Free

time my cousin had squeezed herself into our lives, we were reduced to taking potshots at each other. Truthfully, if Jillian hadn’t been a blood relation—first cousin on my father’s side—I wouldn’t have defended her. But having shared many sisterlike experiences with her, such as first bras, bad vacations, and painful sunburns, I felt duty bound.
    “She has to move out, Abby. That apartment is not big enough for the three of us.”
    “I absolutely agree with you, and she will—soon. I promise.”
    “That’s what you said weeks ago.”
    “So now it’s even sooner. Don’t hiss at me, Nik. You know Jillian is coming out of a severe depression. How many girls get jilted on their honeymoon?”
    Nikki couldn’t argue with that. However, she could have pointed out that not many girls had jilted four men at the altar, either, which had been a hobby of my cousin’s until her recent marriage. “Fine. But promise me you’ll talk to her tonight about getting her own place, okay?”
    “Okay. Now do you want to hear what happened?”
    “Make it fast. The guy is almost done.”
    As I rattled off the story, I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw a squad car pull up behind me. “Oh, great. The cops are here. Puffer called them after all.”
    “Get a hold of your dad, for Pete’s sake, and let him handle the cops.”
    I’d already thought of calling my father, but somehow, being almost twenty-seven years old, I felt foolish asking him to haul me out of a scrape, especially one as silly as this. Besides, I’d already tapped him to get me released from jail after the protest march. I didn’t think he’d be pleased to receive another call.
    “Well, well. Would you look who we have here?” a droll male voice to my left said.
    Resigning myself to embarrassment, I stowed my phone, got out of the Vette, and turned to face my bud, Sgt. Sean Reilly, a good-looking, forty-year-old, Irish American police officer with intelligent brown eyes and a perturbed scowl. Okay, we weren’t exactly buddies, but over the past several months we had come to a point of mutual respect…I hoped.
    “Top o’ the lunch hour to you,” I said, trying to prompt a smile. It didn’t work.
    “It’s not the top of my lunch hour,” he grumbled.
    “I’d say not, if they have you making routine traffic stops.”
    My second attempt at humor didn’t work, either. Reilly planted his hands on his thick black leather belt. “I don’t make routine traffic stops. I heard dispatch read your license plate number and volunteered to take the call as a favor to you .”
    Ouch. And Nikki had laughed when I’d paid extra for a vanity license plate that read: PHLORIST R ME . “Gee, that was really sweet of you, Reilly. Does that mean I can go?”
    “No. It means you can tell me why you tried to run down Professor Puffer.”
    “Let’s clear up that misconception right now. I didn’t try to run him down. He stepped out in front of me.”
    “He said you came within an inch of taking his life.”
    “ Pfft . It was at least two.”
    Reilly’s scowl deepened.
    “He’s a drama queen, Reilly. Okay, so maybe I was fiddling with my radio for a second. That’s beside the point. The point is, he has it in for me because my father hauled him in on a DUI once.”
    “Did you, or did you not, almost hit him?”
    I scratched the end of my nose, trying to think of a way around the question. Clearly, I should have paid more attention in those law classes. “Yes, I almost hit him, but—”
    “Uh-uh,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “No buts.”
    “Mitigating circumstances!” I cried. Wow. I had remembered something. “Puffer walked out from between two cars blabbing away on his phone and never checked to see if anyone was coming.”
    Reilly studied me for a long moment, then finally growled, “All right. Get out of here.”
    “I’m free to go?”
    “On one condition. That I don’t get any more calls about your driving. Got it?”
    “You