Minerva's Ghost Read Online Free Page A

mathematician.’
     
    There it was, the wrongness she had felt put into words. Amanda’s vision seemed to shrink to a point of light and then pure rage seemed to pour through her. “What are you saying, Gabe?” Her voice was choked and hoarse. She had felt the wrongness of it. Minnie had been murdered. She knew it, now.
     
    “Easy, Amanda. I don’t know anything substantive to tell you. Stuff happened, money went missing and Minnie’s dead, but we don’t know and have no facts to support that Minnie’s death was anything but an accident.”
     
    Amanda found herself on her feet heading for the door. Gabe was somehow right with her. “Wait “ he said. “Do you really know where you’re going?”
     
    He was right. She didn’t know. He was not fool enough to touch her when she was so angry. Amanda was not a small woman and she was in great condition, if not at her best at the moment. If he’d touched her at that moment she might have hit him. He somehow kept her in the room without touching her, or provoking her past bearing.
     
    “Amanda, please stay a few minutes. We don’t know anything that points to your aunt’s death being anything except an accident. Minnie would have called it ‘cosmic bad luck’. You know she would.”
     
    Amanda headed back to her chair.  She gathered her composure and straightened her backbone. She knew it was ‘cosmic bad luck’ only in the sense that someone wanted her aunt out of the way. “Tell me what you know.”
     
    ”We really have just started the investigation,” Gabe told her.
     
    “Do you want to continue it?” he asked.
     
    “Yes, I do,” she told him.  She looked him straight in the eye. “I want to be part of it, not just kept in the loop.”
     
    “Count on it,” he said. “I have another person here. His name is Henry Scofield. He agrees with me that something is up. We just don’t know what. I’m going to get with him and some of our other people. Minnie already paid us, so I feel obligated to do the job. I hope you understand.”
     
    He stood up and she stood also and escorted him to the door. This time she offered him her hand. He took it and she put her other small hand over his. “Find the answers. All of us here need to know what’s going on.”
     
    “I know,” he told her. “I need to know, too.”
     
    Amanda got through the day. Her time was taken up with transitional decisions and she avoided thinking about what had happened to Aunt Minnie so she could function. She finished for the day and went home to an empty house needing distraction. She picked at a frozen dinner, but finally dumped it in the trash. She took a hot bath and had some chamomile tea, hoping it would help her sleep. She climbed into bed naked, no gown. Her skin seemed to need to be bare. It felt almost as irritated as her emotions. She tried to lie quietly but her mind wouldn’t rest. Finally her mind found distraction in daydreaming about Gabe…naked. He had a soft touch with a woman’s hand, always a good sign that a man knew how to touch and give pleasure.
     
    Most men she had known didn’t give pleasure very well. They knew how to take, not how to turn women on, but still Amanda had hope that true love existed. Until she found something better she took care of her own pleasure. She closed her eyes and thought of Gabe. She imagined his hands gentle on her breasts. She stroked herself and rubbed her nipples while imagining his hands on her body. It seemed more stimulating than her usual movie star fantasies. Gabe was bigger and more masculine than little, macho guys that made movies until they were decades older than their female costars. Ignoring their wrinkles and bellies got to be a strain. She couldn’t think of a single one who would compare favorably standing next to him. Her fantasy life had found new inspiration. She felt her arousal increase just imagining Gabe in bed with her. She imagined him touching her breasts and kissing her. She ran