Don't Dare a Dame Read Online Free Page A

that had shoved the past into my thoughts. Our small frame house. A smaller kitchen. A note wedged under the sugar bowl when the rest of us came out that morning. My father had spotted it first and picked it up. His stricken expression filled me with terror that he was having a heart seizure. Seeing it, my mother ran to him, and he held the note out. It was one of the few times I saw the two of them interact normally.
     
        As she read it, my mother let out a scream. Dad put a protective arm around her shoulders. She shoved him away. With small, whimpering sobs she fled to the bedroom. My father’s eyes were flooding with tears. When he turned to dash them away, I picked up the note that had fluttered from Ma’s nerveless fingers. My brother’s words scrawled over the page
     
        .
     
    I can’t stomach any more of this hell hole.
     
    Sorry, Sis. Don’t try to find me
     
    .
     
        We had tried, of course.
     
        I took a swallow of Guiness. It was halfway down when I felt the same current that charges the air before lightening strikes.
     
        “I’ve seen happier faces at wakes,” said a voice.
     
        I looked up into steel blue eyes.
     
        “Hiya, Connelly.”
     
        I was hoping he wouldn’t sit, but he did. Mick Connelly had gotten it into his head that he was going to wear me down until I fell for him. I had to stay on my toes to make sure he didn’t. It was harder at close range.
     
        Tossing his uniform hat in a chair, he savored a deep drink of stout. His gaze was like a camera lens, capturing every detail in an instant. Right now it was focused on me.
     
        “Bad day, was it?” With a fingertip he pressed gently on the back of my hand to survey the bruise on my middle knuckle from punching Neal.
     
        Under pretext of lifting my glass, I freed myself as casually as I could.
     
        “Not as bad as it was for the guy on the other end.” I searched the length of the bar, though I already knew the answer. “Seamus didn’t come with you?”
     
        “Billy shanghaied him into buying a ticket to some dinner Kate’s helping with at the parish. Seamus claimed the food would be worth the long-winded speaker, but I wasn’t tempted.”
     
        I smiled. Officers Seamus Hanlon and Billy Leary were nearing retirement age. They’d been my father’s best friends, present in my earliest memories. Billy and Connelly were partners now that a bad knee kept Seamus mostly on desk duty. Seamus and Connelly palled around a lot, though, and as often as not came into Finn’s together.
     
        Connelly had tipped his chair back, comfortable as a cat. The tiny cowlick that decorated the front of his reddish-brown hair was asserting itself.
     
        “Is it anything I could help with?” he asked.
     
        “Not unless you were walking a beat here twenty-six years ago.”
     
        He chuckled. Connelly probably wasn’t past thirty. Not half a dozen years had passed since he’d left Ireland. Since he knew I was aware of it, my answer had stirred his interest.
     
        “This have to do with the scraped knuckle?” he asked curiously.
     
        I nodded. If we were going to be sitting here, talking work was safe turf. I told him about my afternoon with the Vanhorn sisters.
     
        “Christ almighty,” he said when I got to the part about the blind woman’s dog. He rubbed at his chin. “Anyone know the two of them were expecting you?”
     
        “Not when I was coming,” I said slowly. I saw what he was thinking. Nothing had been stolen. It could be because the intruder realized people were home, and searching for valuables would make noise. In that case, though, why not leave? The pitcher that had broken had been next to the exact spot where someone would stand if they were listening, or if they wanted to know why the women had hired a detective.
     
        “What about the brother? Neal, is it?” Connelly