Murder Mile High Read Online Free

insecurities all over him. “Look, Drake, I’ve got to go.”
    “Call me if you need to,” he said after a pause. “Call collect.”
    “Yeah, sure. I’ll be fine. Bye.”
    I hung up and wiped my palm on the side of my jeans. I didn’t want to be lumping Drake in with Tony or Andy or any of the men who’d let me down. But something about being back in Denver made it seem unavoidable.
     

Chapter 3
     
    I parked the bus in the shade of a big sycamore, across the street from my parents’ house. It was after eight, full dark. Even nosy Mrs. Beamish, if she still lived next door, would have trouble seeing us. Amy sat beside me; Barker was curled up on the back seat, my personal car alarm. Andy had driven his own car over to pick up my dad for his jaunt to the Legion Hall. The front door of my parents’ house opened, and Andy walked out beside my father.
    Dad looked small next to his son. He was bent—the legacy of so many construction jobs—and his hair had progressed from iron-gray to white, combed back carefully as always.
    I felt shocked. I remembered him as he had looked the day I brought Tony home after our hasty marriage. He had risen out of his big chair when my mother started crying at my announcement. Leaving the Sunday afternoon game blaring on the TV, he had escorted us to the door. Standing there, tall and broad and forbidding, he’d told me I was never to come back, since I’d hurt my mother so much. That wouldn’t have kept me away, if it hadn’t been for the grim satisfaction behind his words. He’d always said that letting me go to college would end in disaster; once again, he was proved right.
    Now I looked at his shrunken form, the thinning hair, and wondered why we were tiptoeing around this man, what fire he could possibly still possess that made Andy reluctantly agree to get him out of the house for me, as if the old man could physically bar the door to his errant daughter.
    Andy scowled over at us after shutting the passenger door, before he climbed into his side of the car and drove away.
    “That’s Daddy,” Amy said blithely. “He doesn’t want us to think he likes doing us a favor. But he’s not so bad, really.”
    "That’s not what you said last summer.”
    Her brow wrinkled. “Well, he was different when I got home. Like—I don’t know, like he almost respected me or something.” She giggled. “Fat chance, huh. Well, they’re gone. Let’s go in.”
    She led the way across the street and used her key to open the door. “Hi, Gramma, it’s me!”
    I stopped in the doorway, overcome by the familiar smells of lemon oil and my dad’s pipe tobacco and the faint, musty scent of old house. The couch was the same, its striped upholstery faded now into a soft haze of blue and gray, its cushions saggier. My dad’s armchair still stood in front of the TV, but the TV was bigger, dominating the room. Through the archway I could see the chrome dinette set in the dining nook. The curtains looked new—not the faded draperies of nubby polyester I remembered, but some cheerful, homemade ones with sunflowers. The rooms seemed much smaller, cramped and crammed with doilies and plastic flowers and my mother’s collections of silver state teaspoons and china leprechauns.
    “Come on,” Amy hissed from the hallway. “I’ve told her you’re here. She wants to see you."
    I followed her into the short hall. On the left was my parents’ bedroom, on the right my old room; the one bathroom was at the end of the hall.
    “Amy?” It was my mother’s voice. “Lizzie?”
    “She’s right here, Gramma.” Amy pushed me through the doorway. “I’ll make us some tea.”
    I hesitated, feeling awkward, just inside the room. The woman in the bed had changed. She had always been short, like me, but she was no longer pleasingly plump, as she had called herself; now her face looked thin, and the hand she held out to me trembled.
    “Well, come here then.”       Her voice was the same,