Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) Read Online Free

account color or print. A splotch of something that looked like dried egg was stuck on his paisley tie, and his multiple chins were darkened by a day’s growth of beard. Rose-colored pouches hung beneath his green eyes, and when he stood, smiled, and extended his hand, his belly hung over his belt, straining the buttons on his wrinkled shirt. Due to the nicotine stains on both his teeth and fingers, I kept the handshake brief.
    “Detective Clayton Mabry,” he said. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
    Ma’am? Seeing as it was less than a week until my thirtieth birthday, I was sensitive to things like that. It was the first time I remembered anyone calling me “Ma’am”—before that, I’d always been “Miss,” and somehow, hearing it in that good ol’ boy accent made it seem even worse. Hell, thirty wasn’t that old—was it?
    Detective Mabry pointed to the chair on the opposite side of his desk and offered me the pink box of Good & Plenty he held in his hand.
    “Want some?”
    I held out my hand as he shook some candies out of the box, then I completely ignored Jeannie’s advice and began to talk to him. The thing was, you felt sorry for him. The man looked like such a mess, and he sounded like he was an oar short of a pair. I couldn’t imagine him ever solving a case, and I felt like any little bit I could do to help him out would be a kindness. Detective Amoretti slouched into a chair at an adjacent desk, pulled out his cell phone, and began playing with the numbers on the phone’s face.
    Mabry interrupted my retelling of the morning events. “When you say Nick Pontus’s name, honey, you flinch. You got history with him?”
    I exhaled loudly to buy some time. Maybe he was more perceptive than I thought. I really didn’t want to talk about this. “History. I guess that’s one way to put it.”
    He extended the box with raised eyebrows and then poured a few more pink and white candies into my hand.
    “Go ahead,” he said. “Tell me about it.”
    I chewed the licorice-flavored candies slowly, trying to think of some way to get out of telling the whole story.
    It was impossible. The way his eyes were fastened on my face, he wasn’t going to let me dance around. I swallowed and started. “Back when I was in high school, eleventh grade, Nick dated a friend of mine. My best friend, actually. He was older than her by about five years, which is a lot for kids that age, and even back then he was into flash. It was one of those whirlwind courtships they talk about. I tried to warn her off him, but she found something fascinating about him. Basically, he bought her affections, got her pregnant, then married her. She quit school. I haven’t spoken to either one of them since.”
    “That’s it? You didn’t get an invite to the wedding so you dumped your best friend?”
    I didn’t want to look away, but his eyes cut into me like serrated jade. “It’s complicated,” I said to the ceiling. “You wouldn’t understand.” I didn’t see how dredging up any of this would help them find Nick’s killer. I crossed my arms over my chest and slumped in my chair.
    He slowly shook his head as he wrote something down in his notebook. Then he asked, “You sure the shots came from up on the bridge?”
    I bounced my shoulders once. I knew I was acting like a bratty kid, but I couldn’t help it. “Not really. I guess I just assumed that from the way the car peeled out, you know, made a U-tum and burned rubber.”
    “Hmm. And you said you couldn’t see the driver at all.”
    “I barely saw the roof of the car. What I could see of it was black, though, and shiny—not a convertible. There are low concrete barriers along the sides of the bridge. Come to think of it, I can see over those walls with no problem when I’m driving my Jeep, so I guess it must have been more like a sports car. Something fairly low.”
    He wrote at length in his notebook, without looking up at me. I glanced over at Detective Amoretti. He