Doyle After Death Read Online Free Page A

attack, okay? I paid my dues!”
    â€œIs this how you pay your dues? By paying this little whore?”
    â€œWhore!” the blonde fluted, laughing. “Better than being a naggy old bitch! I’ve heard all about you! Cold as an icicle, he said, and shaped like one too!”
    This seemed to burn the last inch of the fuse down on Claudine’s firecracker, and she rushed the front door, burst in, and churned up the stairs inside—­we couldn’t see the steps from where we were, but we could hear her orthopedic shoes pounding up them.
    â€œJesus!” Brennan burst out, licking his lips. “Candy, you’d better get out of here . . . Go hide in the bath!”
    The girl dodged through a door behind the balcony and was lost from sight. She must have gotten under cover, because Claudine rushed out without losing any momentum, storming up to Brennan on the balcony. He backed toward the railing, his hands lifted.
    â€œClaudine, listen—­”
    â€œYou are not supposed to behave like a pig all the way into the next world!” she shouted, charging him.
    â€œClaudine!” She gave him a vicious shove and he flailed for balance, grabbing the balcony with his outspread hands, his back arched over it.
    She snatched up the wooden chair he’d been sitting on, and swung it, hard, connecting with his head—­the balcony cracked, and broke . . .
    â€œSee we got the ol’ laws o’ physics here, too,” Bertram said dryly, as Brennan came plummeting down, striking the lane face up, the back of his head cracking on the cobblestones.
    â€œOuch,” Bertram said.
    â€œYeah.” I grimaced. I could see blood spreading from his fractured head . . .
    Blood? Here?
    The blonde scurried out the front door, her dress still unbuttoned, her feet bare, and ran down the street. “Major!” she yelled. “Mr. Doyle!”
    I walked over to Brennan and hunkered beside him. His glazed eyes were blinking spasmodically, his mouth working. He seemed alive. He licked his lips and said, “Dammit . . . Claudine . . .”
    Bertram stepped up beside me. I stood and murmured, “I thought he was a goner. But you can’t die here, I guess. If you’re already . . .”
    â€œOh you can kinda kill folks here,” Bertram said. “But not like that. Not even by cutting off their fool heads, much less bashing them in. Look.” He pointed at Brennan’s head. The split in his skull was gone. He was no longer bleeding. His eyes were clearing. I could see that the welt on his forehead where she’d hit him was going down, vanishing.
    â€œHelp me up, goddammit, somebody,” he said, stretching out his arms.
    Bertram and I helped him to his feet. “How you feeling, Brennan?” Bertram asked.
    â€œHeadache. Healing up I guess.”
    â€œDidn’t know you were married.”
    â€œI’m not! Not in the afterlife, dammit! Oh God, here she comes . . .”
    Claudine was striding toward him again.
    Brennan shook his head firmly. “You are not going to hit me again, woman . . .”
    â€œHere, what’s all this?” A voice called out. I turned to see a round-­faced man with a thick mustache, its ends waxed to points, lank red-­brown hair, peppered with gray. He came hurrying toward us, almost trotting. If we did any real breathing around here, he’d be short of breath. With his tweed knickerbockers, his patrician air, he had the look of a British middle-­class gentleman from Edwardian times—­but he was coatless, in his shirtsleeves and suspenders, as if he’d been interrupted at something. “What’s all this I hear about ladies chucking gentlemen off balconies?”
    â€œAttempted murder, is what it is, Doyle!” Brennan growled. “This here woman did it!” He pointed at Claudine. “My ex-­wife! It’s her done