Paper Doll Read Online Free

me. Ken and Barbie. Except Barbie wouldn’t look at me.
    “Put the picture down,” he said. “Who the hell let you in here?”
    “Your father,” I said. “He hired me to find who killed your mother.”
    “Swell,” the brother said, “we don’t have enough half-arsed cretin cops slopping around. Dad has to hire an extra one.”
    “You’re Meredith,” I said to the sister. She nodded.
    “And you’re Loudon, Junior,” I said. He didn’t say anything.
    “Sorry about your mother,” I said.
    “Great,” he said. “Now why don’t you just get lost?”
    “Why so hostile?” I said.
    “Hostile? Me? If I get hostile, brother, you’ll goddamn well know about it.”
    “Chi-ip,” Meredith said. Her voice was very soft.
    “Your father probably needs to do this,” I said.
    “Yeah,” Chip said. “Well, I don’t like you looking at my mother’s picture.”
    His stare was full of arrogance. It came with wealth and position. And it came with being a wrestler. He thought he could toss me on my kiester.
    If I kept talking to them he was going to try it, and find he had misjudged. It would probably be a good thing for him to learn. But now was probably not the best time for him to learn it.
    I put the picture down carefully on the table and stood.
    “I’m afraid I’ll have to keep looking into this. I’ll try not to be more annoying than I have to be.”
    Meredith said, in a voice I could barely hear, “You might make everything worse.”
    “You better keep your hands off my mom’s stuff,” Chip said.
    I smiled graciously, and went past them and out the front door. It wasn’t much of a move, but it was better than wrestling with Chip.

chapter seven
    I MET LEE Farrell in a place called Packie’s in the South End. He was alone at the bar when I came in. He had a half-drunk draft beer in front of him and an empty shot glass.
    I slid onto the bar stool and looked at the shot glass.
    “Old Thompson?” I said.
    “Four Roses,” he said. “You got a problem with that?”
    “Nostalgia,” I said. “When I was a kid it was a Croft Ale and a shot of Old Thompson.”
    “Well, now it’s not,” Farrell said.
    “Jesus,” I said, “how old were you when you dropped out of charm school?”
    The bartender came down and poured another shot into Farrell’s glass. He looked at me. “Draft,” I said. He drew one and put it on a napkin in front of me.
    Farrell took in about half his whiskey, washed it down with some draft beer. Then he shifted on the bar stool and leaned back a little and stared at me.
    “You got a reputation,” he said. “Tough guy.”
    “Richly deserved,” I said.
    “Smart too,” Farrell said.
    “But modest,” I said.
    It was a little past five-thirty in the evening and the bar was lined with people. Made you wonder about the work people did if they had to get drunk when they finished.
    “Quirk says you get full cooperation,” Farrell said. His speech wasn’t slurred, but there was a thickness to his voice. “Says you’re pretty good, says you might come up with something, if there’s anything to come up with.”
    I nodded and sipped a little beer.
    “Sort of implies that I won’t,” Farrell said. “Doesn’t it? Sort of implies that maybe I’m not so good.”
    “You got other things to do. I don’t.”
    Farrell emptied his shot glass, and drank the remainder of his beer. He nodded toward the bartender, who refilled him. There was a flush on Farrell’s cheeks, and his eyes seemed bright.
    “How many people in this room you figure are gay?” he said.
    I glanced around the room. It was full of men. I swallowed a little more beer. I looked at Farrell and shrugged.
    “Everybody but me,” I said.
    “Pretty sure you can tell by just looking?”
    “It’s a gay bar,” I said. “I know you’re gay. Quirk told me.”
    “I’m not so sure I like that,” Farrell said.
    “Why, is it a secret?”
    “No, but why is he talking about it?”
    “As an explanation of why