Murder is a Girl's Best Friend Read Online Free Page B

might call a double blusher. First I blush because I’m embarrassed about something, then I blush again because I’m embarrassed by my own embarrassment.)
    “I’m glad to finally meet you,” Terry continued, taking off his hat and gloves and putting them down next to the shoebox.
    I was shocked when I saw his hair. It was thick and pure white—as white as the snow swirling past the window outside. Yet his slim, handsome face was unlined, and his eyebrows were as black as crow feathers. I guessed him to be about twenty-nine or thirty—around the age Bob would be now if he’d lived.
    “I’m glad to meet you, too,” I said, though I wasn’t yet sure that I was. “Were you very good friends with my husband? He never mentioned your name in any of his letters.”
    “That’s because Bob never used my real name. He called me Whitey. A lot of the guys did.”
    “Oh, Whitey!” I cried, heart doing a happy flip-flop. “So that’s who you are! Bob wrote about you all the time! He said you were his closest friend.”
    “I was. And he was mine. He saved my life. Twice.” Terry’s face turned serious and sad—very sad. “If only I could have saved his.”
    I didn’t say anything. I was too choked up to speak. And so was Terry, who was now wringing his hands and staring into space like a zombie. I wondered if he might be suffering from shell shock.
    We sat in silence for a few seconds, letting our emotions peak and subside, then Terry snapped out of his trance and directed his damp blue gaze at me. “I’ll never forgive myself, you know.” His tone was dead serious. “When Bob was shot, I was curled up on the floor of the foxhole, shaking and crying like a baby, hiding from the action like the miserable, disgusting coward I am. I didn’t even try to save him. Hell, I didn’t even know he’d been hit until two hours after he died.”
    Terry’s words demolished me. I felt as if I were thrashing around in the dirt, squirming on my belly like a reptile, looking for a deep, dark hole to dive into. Please don’t tell me any more! I wanted to scream. Please don’t make me think about the bullets ripping through my beloved husband’s lungs and heart. Don’t make me think about the unthinkable moment when his warm, sweet blood began spilling out of his warm, sweet body onto the blistered, bombed-out North Korean eart h . . .
    “I tried to write to you after I got home,” Terry went on. “I wanted to tell you how brave and humane and heroic Bob was, how he had saved both my life and my sanity. I wanted to tell you how much he loved you, and missed you, and how proud he was that you were making your own way in the world. I wrote you about twenty different letters, but I never mailed any of them. I tore them to pieces and threw them away.”
    “But why?” I asked, stifling a strong impulse to howl.
    “Because I’m a gutless bastard, that’s why. I was so ashamed of myself I felt I didn’t have the right to communicate with you. If I had looked after Bob the way that he looked after me, he might still be alive.” Terry’s head dipped low between his wide shoulders, like a melon from a trellised vine. He looked as though he might start crying.
    “That’s ridiculous!” I sputtered, reaching over to touch the sleeve of his jacket. “You aren’t responsible for Bob’s death. Nobody is responsible. There was a war going on. People get killed in a war. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”
    Terry raised his heavy head and looked me in the eye again. “Thanks for the kind words, Paige, but I don’t deserve them. I really am a coward, you know. How do you think my hair got so white? From fear—total fear. It turned white during my first few weeks of fighting.”
    “It isn’t a sin to be afraid.”
    “It is when you’re in the Army.”
    There was so much pain in Terry’s eyes it hurt me to look at them. I shifted my gaze toward the table to our left, where two middle-aged businessmen in gray