Dead Write: A Forensic Handwriting Mystery Read Online Free Page A

Claudia guessed he was Eastern European. He rang off, asking over his shoulder where she was going as they joined the traffic on Forty-eighth Street.
    She read him the address from the Post-it note she’d written it on. “About how far is that?”
    “Distance? Mile and quarter maybe. How long? Ten, fifteen minutes.”
    She sat back in the seat. The taxi smelled like some kind of meat—lamb, maybe, and onions. Strong, but not unpleasant. Savory enough to make her hungry for something more than the dry turkey sandwich she’d eaten on the flight across country.
    The taxi wove through the traffic and turned onto Broadway where the lights were already bright in the gathering dusk. Times Square, the Coca-Cola sign, the endless advertisements, the theaters. It all made her wish again that Jovanic were with her.
    “Where are you from?” she asked the driver, to distract herself from her thoughts.
    “Belorussia,” he said, flicking a glance at her in the rearview mirror. “You know where it is?”
    “Yes, some of my boyfriend’s family come from Minsk. The rest are Croatian.”
    The cabbie took a closer look at her in the rearview. His voice warmed up a few degrees. “Minsk is capital of Belorussia.”
    “How long have you lived over here?”
    “Twenty years.”
    “A long time. I’m actually on my way to meet someone from your country.”
    “ Da ? Maybe I know him. I know lot of Russians in neighborhood.”
    “It’s a her, not a him. She’s a matchmaker—Grusha Olinetsky.”
    The sound the driver made in his throat was the guttural equivalent of an eye roll and reminded her of Jovanic’s reaction when she’d told him about the matchmaker. “ Akh, Olinetsky. Noo kanetzna, da da, ya iyo znayoo. That one! She call herself baroness . Da , I know Olinetsky. ”
    “You know her personally?”
    He shook his head. “People talk about her. She’s friend of yours?”
    “No, it’s business.”
    “In Russia, last name would be Olinetskaya,” the cabbie offered, warming to his subject. “Husband would be Olinetsky. When a woman come to United States, she keep her husband’s name, drop - aya. So, Olinetskaya become Olinetsky. See?”
    “I just learned something new,” Claudia said. Had Grusha been married when she emigrated to the U.S.? She wondered where Mr. Olinetsky might be now.
    “Grusha,” the cabbie mused. “Comes from old Russia. You don’t hear that name no more.”
    “Really? I didn’t know that.”
    “Maybe her father read Dostoevsky.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “The name. From Brothers Karamazov. Grushenka was beautiful girl. Everyone is in love with her.”
    Claudia smiled. “What did you do back in Russia?”
    The cabdriver snorted. “I was schoolteacher. Grow up under Communists. Came here to make better life. So now I drive cab.” He hesitated for a beat. “This Olinetskaya, I hear something . . .” He broke off.
    “What have you heard?” Claudia pressed. “Oh, come on, that’s not fair. You can’t not tell me after a start like that.”
    She met his eyes in the mirror. His slid away and he gave a quick shake of his head. “ Nyet. Just stupid gossip. Look, here is address for you.”
    End of conversation.
    Okay, so maybe he didn’t believe Grusha was a baroness. Neither did Claudia. What else might he have been on the verge of saying?
    The cab had stopped outside an attractive building with a redbrick exterior that dated from early in the twentieth century. She handed the driver a twenty and waited for her change, her curiosity unsatisfied, and got out into light rain. The coolness on her face was refreshing after the stuffiness of her room and the hodgepodge of odors in the taxi.
    She took her time crossing to the arched doorway that bore the address of the building where Grusha Olinetsky ran her business—one of the many industrial lofts around the city that had been renovated into office buildings. On the ground floor was a store-front that faced the street. Manicured dwarf