Killing Cousins Read Online Free

you go fishing,” I said.
    Rudy laughed and leaned forward and kissed me.
    â€œWhy would Bill buy the Finch house? Why would he want to, and how could he afford to?” I asked.
    â€œThat’s it. I kiss you and you ask about how Bill can or can’t afford…Why do you think of Bill when I kiss you?” he asked.
    â€œI was thinking of Bill before you kissed me,” I said. Rudy had never learned that my mind never stops thinking. It never winds down. You ask a guy what he’s thinking about when he’s staring off into the distance, and if he says nothing, then that is exactly what he is thinking about. If you ask a woman and she says nothing, she’s lying. “How do you know that Bill bought the house? Who did you hear it from?”
    â€œLord, I hate it when you interrogate me. I always feel like I’m snitching on my friends,” he said.
    â€œYou are snitching on your friends. So which one of your friends did you hear it from?” I asked.
    â€œWhat if I don’t feel like telling you?” he said and put his hand on his hip.
    â€œFine. Good night. I’m going out to the Finch house early tomorrow.” I headed up the steps to our bedroom.
    â€œThat’s it? Fine? You just give up?” he asked, following me. “That’s not like you. Are you feeling okay?”
    â€œI’ll find out sooner or later. If you want to play that way, I can go along,” I said, sounding more peeved than I really was. In fact, I knew I could find out with no trouble at all, so if Rudy didn’t want to tell me it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was just fun to play along.
    â€œIt was Chuck. Chuck said that he’d heard from Elmer that the mayor had bought the Finch estate because of some project he had planned.”
    We reached the top of the steps. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me. Besides, if it went through that many people, it might not be that reliable.”
    â€œChuck doesn’t lie.”
    â€œUnless it’s about his ex-wife,” I said. “Whom he hates with a passion.”
    â€œHe has reason,” Rudy said, getting undressed.
    â€œWell, whatever. I’m just saying that by the time the story gets through the fourth or fifth person, there’s usually only a grain of truth left to it. I’ll find out on my own,” I said.
    â€œSometimes I don’t know about you,” he said, rolling his eyes.
    â€œYeah, well, hush up and come over here and undo my buttons on this godforsaken peach fluffy thing my mother calls a dress,” I said.
    Rudy came over and stood behind me for a minute. “There are no buttons on this dress.”
    â€œI know,” I said and turned around and kissed him.

Three
    Sunday morning broke with brilliant sunshine and a barge creeping up Old Man River. I rolled out of bed, took a shower, made breakfast—even though I was reminded by my children that my pancakes were not as good as my mother’s and my eggs were too done—and got the kids dressed. Then I returned to my gingham blue bedroom upstairs and to my computer. Rachel and Mary went outside to ride their bikes, and Rudy and Matthew were downstairs watching the pre-pre-game show to some sporting event.
    I had recently broken down and jumped on the information highway. I now understood the addiction to the Internet. It was incredibly convenient, and I could e-mail all of my scattered family for nothing, rather than pay the long-distance phone bills. Being the researcher that I am, I found the endless access to information (on any number of subjects) just too enticing to ignore. While doing research, I’d connected with people from branches of my family tree that I’d never even known existed. One man even sent me a scanned photograph of one of my great-great-grandparents whom I’d never seen a photograph of before. Amazing. And I had no idea at all how any of it actually worked. I just