Hanging by a Thread Read Online Free Page B

didn’t match the driving she was supposed to be doing, so he figured she was going somewhere she shouldn’t. Which she was, of course. He’d seen me going into the bookstore and talking to her, and she smiled at me in a way that, he said, told him all he needed to know. That night it was her turn to stay and close up the shop, and normally we would have a few minutes together. But this time I walked up Water Street a little after five, just to look in the window and see her. It was pouring rain and when I waved at her, I got water up my sleeve—funny the things you remember. She waved back and I went on up the street. I wish I’d gone in, I wish...” He twisted his head, dismissing that futile thought. “He worked just two doors down from her, did you know that?”
    Betsy said, “Yes, in the Heritage gift shop on the comer.” Betsy could see it in her mind’s eye, it was light red brick and went around the comer in a curve just broad enough to accommodate a door. Its big windows were generally full of imported dishes, sweaters or dresses, and glassware.
    “He took that job to spy on her. He did freelance computer programming in an office in their house for very respectable pay; and he did some freelance home repairs, carpentry mostly, for which he got paid under the table. Not paying taxes made up for not getting union wages. He didn’t need that job at the gift shop.”
    “How long did Angela work at the bookstore?”
    “Not quite two years. She’d begged and pleaded with him and he finally said she could get a part-time job. It wasn’t for the money, not entirely, she just wanted out of the house. But he couldn’t stand the thought of her meeting strange men all day long, so right after she started, he got that job so he could watch her.” Foster smiled. “He wanted to work in the pet shop right next door, but she was allergic to cat hair, and he’d’ve come home with it on him. And he couldn’t work in the place on the other side of the bookstore, it’s a beauty parlor.” He ripped his bread stick into three pieces. “There’s the proof he was some kind of nut, taking that job just to spy on her. She was never, ever unfaithful to him.”
    Betsy’s eyebrows went up at that, and he said, “I mean it. We wanted to—God, how we wanted to! But he made her carry a cell phone and he called her about every fifteen minutes when she wasn’t home or in the bookstore, where was she, what was she doing, who was there with her. He said he loved her, but it was a crazy love. He was crazy, insane.”
    He looked up at Betsy. “So you see, when she was shot, I knew it was him. It had to be. It wasn’t me, and there wasn’t anyone else. The police thought so, too, when they figured out it wasn’t a robbery. But he’d rigged some kind of alibi, so when Gloria in the bookstore told them about me coming in to buy more books in six months than I’d bought in five years, and talking like a friend to someone I ignored when her husband was around ...” He made a pained face. “Funny how there’s always a slip somewhere, isn’t it? Gloria knew me because her husband hired me to remodel their house back when I was just starting out, and she’s a member of my church, which is where she saw me not speaking to Angela in front of Paul. We tried so hard to be cool in front of Paul that she noticed.
    “Anyhow, Mike Malloy came to talk to me. I told him that I was very fond of Angela, that she’d told me her husband was crazy jealous and beat her up every time the mood took him. I told him Paul had just found out about me and Angela, so it had to be Paul who shot her.”
    Betsy said, “But then Paul was shot.”
    Johns nudged a fragment of breadstick with a forefinger. “Turned everything on its head. Now they were looking for someone with a motive to shoot both of them. And the closest they can come is me.”
    “So why didn’t they arrest you?”
    “They did. But they had to let me go, because while I was