Like Father Like Daughter Read Online Free

began pulsating in my throat. I took another drink of water and thought. No, nothing I should be worried about. My credit was average. We weren’t in debt, but we certainly couldn’t take on anything else. My cell records wouldn’t show anything because the only people I ever talked to were my husband, my mother, and friends—mostly my best friend Dani. My background check would show my shoplifting charge from when I was eighteen, just two months shy of being able to have it expunged, but that was it. Unless you count the handful of traffic tickets I had accumulated over the years, thanks to my lead right foot.
    “No, nothing,” I said as confidently as I could.
    “Mmm-hmm. Well, let’s just take a peek, shall we?” He picked up the file folder and flipped it open so I couldn’t see what he was seeing. “Credit score is 650. Have you guys been having money problems?”
    “Nothing substantial,” I said, feeling a bit disturbed that someone could see the most personal details of my life. “We’re a little slow on some of our payments, as you can see, but we don’t owe anybody any money other than our car payments and mortgage. Ryan’s working…sorry… was working a lot of overtime lately to try to help us catch up, but it’s not that bad.”
    As he continued flipping through the pages, I looked at his face. His skin was red, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the sun or if he was just one of those people who was always red because of high blood pressure. Considering his size, I assumed it was the latter.
    “Says here you were convicted of shoplifting back in 1998. What happened there?”
    I could see the judgment on his face. It was so long ago, I’d never had to explain it to anyone before. Ryan knew, but he just thought it was funny. Said he was the last to judge, since he’d had two DUIs when he was younger.
    “I was young and broke and stupid. There was this new lipstick that Angelina Jolie was advertising for MAC and I wanted it so badly, even though I didn’t get paid much at my job as a hostess at Outback. I was with a friend at Macy’s, and she talked me into stealing it. I slipped it into my purse, thinking I was too slick to get caught, but just as I was about to leave the store, a security guard stopped me. My mom hired a lawyer and it was amended down to attempted shoplifting and I got sixty days probation. That’s all there is to it. I’ve been a law-abiding citizen ever since. I’m sorry, but what does any of this have to do with Ryan’s death? Why are you wasting time with me when you could be out there looking for the real killer?”
    “And you work as a paralegal, is that right?” He had completely ignored my questions.
    I sighed. If this was what it took to figure out who killed Ryan, so be it. “Yes. At Logan and Logan. Why?”
    “No reason. Just curious. All right, let’s take a look at your cell phone records.”
    I watched as his eyes scanned the page. He flipped to the next page and used his sausage-like finger to follow along the lines as he continued reading.
    “There’s really no point to all of this,” I said, growing frustrated with the intrusion into my personal life.
    “What’s that?”
    “I said, there’s really no point. As you can see, I only talk to my mother, Ryan, my friends, and sometimes my boss. Again, you’re wasting your time, detective.” I fought back tears of frustration. I wanted the questioning to end. I wanted to get back to my grief and start making arrangements for my husband’s funeral.
    “I don’t think we’re wasting time at all. In fact, I think I’m sitting right across from your husband’s killer now.”
    “Excuse me?” I asked incredulously. I knew they would suspect me at first, but figured it was just “standard procedure,” and that once they did a background check, they would realize they were wasting their time. I had no idea they would really suspect me of murdering my husband. “You really think I killed