Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel Read Online Free Page B

responsible,” Laura said.
    “When he wants to be.” I turned the brats again. They were turning brown. They had grill lines on their plump sides.
    “What about the house?” she asked.
    I looked at her. She was still staring at the grill as if it provided all the answers.
    I sighed. There was no easy way to tell her this.
    “I found three bodies in the basement,” I said.
    “Jesus!” She jumped backward, as if I had put the bodies there. “Did you call the police?”
    “Not until I talked to you.”
    Jimmy came back around the building, hugging catsup, mayonnaise, mustard , and relish to his chest. He set those items on the picnic table, which was several yards from us.
    “Does Jim know?” Laura asked quietly.
    I shook my head.
    “Bodies,” she whispered.
    Jimmy came over to us. He looked from me to Laura, sensing something wrong, and blaming me for it.
    “Smoke tell you that we’re staying?” he asked Laura.
    She blinked at Jimmy, then frowned. Obviously the change of subject confused her. “Staying?”
    “In Chicago,” Jimmy said. “He says we got a community here. We got to stay for it. It’ll help me grow up.”
    Laura, bless her, made the transition. She smiled at Jim as if nothing was wrong. “Smokey says that, does he?”
    Jimmy smiled back at her, as if they shared a secret. “I know, I told him before we went that we got friends here, but sometimes Smoke’s got to see stuff for himself.”
    Laura nodded, then looked at me sideways. “He hadn’t told me that.”
    “Figures.” Jimmy grabbed the bag of buns, opened it, and pulled one out. Then he carefully split the bun and set it on a plate.
    “You forgot the potato salad,” I said. “And the green salad.”
    “Yuck,” Jimmy said, and set his plate on top of the pile. He headed back toward the apartment.
    “You’ve got quite a defender,” Laura said.
    “Actually, you do,” I said. “He’s been calling me stupid and dumb and a real jerk ever since last summer.”
    Laura was silent for a moment. “You were just protecting him.”
    I couldn’t tell if she believed that or if she was just parroting my own words back to me. “I didn’t do a very good job of it. There’s no place safe, at least for him and me.”
    She put a hand on my arm, startling me. I looked down at her. Her gaze met mine for the first time since she arrived.
    “You do better than most,” she said.
    Yeah. With my dangerous job that the entire community I’d come back to wanted me to quit, and my devil’s bargain with the local gangs, and my struggle to stay away from law enforcement. Jim and I were a unit, but my side of it was iffy at best.
    Laura walked to the TV tray, spread the plates out on it, and then took the rest of the buns from the package. She split them, just like Jimmy had been doing.
    “How long have they been dead?” she asked.
    Now it was my turn to feel confused. Then I realized she had gone back to the original conversation, the one about the bodies.
    “I have no idea,” I said. “They’re skeletons, Laura. And that’s not the worst of it—”
    “We don’t got nothing but Thousand Island,” Jimmy announced as he came around the building. He carried the covered bowls of potato salad and regular salad. A nearly empty bottle of Thousand Island dressing rested precariously on top of the pile.
    “I almost forgot,” Laura said. “I brought root beer.”
    She headed around the building as Jimmy placed the last items on the table. One of my neighbors peered out her back window, saw me, and waved. I waved back.
    “She forgive you?” Jimmy grabbed the grilling fork and poked at the brats.
    I took the fork from him. “It’s not that simple.”
    “Yeah, you always say that.” He picked up a plate. “These look done.”
    They were. I stabbed two and put them on Jim’s plate. Laura brought a jug of A&W R oot B eer , ice cold from one of the nearby restaurants , and set it on the table. Jim exclaimed his pleasure, and if she