Rehearsal for Murder (Maggie Ryan) Read Online Free Page B

aren’t we? The old improvisation team.”
    “You’ve missed it too?”
    She walked a few steps in uneasy silence. “I guess I haven’t had time to notice it was gone.”
    A lot of things you haven’t had time to notice, love. Nick quelled his resentment and said, “Sarah takes a lot of energy. But it’s been weeks since we’ve talked about anything besides who does dinner or who takes her to the pediatrician.”
    “Well, things are still shaking down.”
    “It’s been five months!”
    “But she changes every day! And you’re working now, and—”
    Two explosions burst through the clatter and rumble of the city dusk. Little Sarah stirred and whimpered. Maggie said doubtfully, “Backfire?”
    “Maybe.” They looked at each other a second, then turned and ran back to the corner where they had left Ramona. A few people had paused on the sidewalks to peer toward the middle of the block. A woman, not Ramona, was standing there in the light of the streetlamp, screaming. As they ran toward her, a coatless woman in a miniskirt began to soothe her.
    “What happened?” Nick asked them.
    “Don’t know,” said the miniskirted woman. “There were shots, and I heard Carlotta screaming, so I came out. She was running away from that building. But she’s not hurt, I can see that.”
    A scaffold covered the sidewalk in front of the building she indicated, and plywood blocked most of the facade. Maggie had disappeared into the black shadows under the scaffold. “Nick!” she called. “Get an ambulance!”
    There was no arguing with the urgency in her voice. Nick sprinted the half-block to the restaurant, despite Sarah’s complaints about the jouncing, and grabbed the phone by the register. The headwaiter stopped protesting when he heard Nick’s request for the police and an ambulance.
    Nick ran back to the scaffold, murmuring distracted explanations to the indignant Sarah. One of the plywood sheets was split, and the blackness of the gutted building loomed beyond. When he shielded his eyes from the glare of the streetlight, he could see Maggie in the shadows, kneeling. And more.
    Sprawled on her back on the dirty cement floor, Ramona Ricci lay very still, a dark stain spreading across the pale fur of the cape rumpled beneath her.
     

    II
    Tuesday night
    March 6, 1973
     
    “How bad is it?” he asked.
    “Bad.” Maggie was kneeling beside her, pressing her red scarf against Ramona’s side. “She’s in shock. Blinked a couple of times when I yelled for you, but her eyes haven’t opened since.”
    “The ambulance is on its way.” Nick knelt to feel the fluttery pulse, but Sarah began to wail. “I’d better remove the distraction,” he said, straightening.
    “Okay. Do you see her bag anywhere?”
    “Not out there. I’ll look.”
    It wasn’t near Ramona. He moved a couple of steps into the shadowed building and paused. Shafts of twilight broke through the clumsy wall of plywood and spattered the heaps of rubble, twisted stumps of utility conduits, trash cans. There was no movement. The assailant, he reasoned, would be gone; he could see a clear route through the gutted building to the next street, where the door in its plywood barrier was cracked open. No hiding places; a staircase zigzagged up the side wall to future upper stories that now were bare girders, but the stair was blocked by a solid, soundly padlocked metal door where it started down to the basement. No one could hide in this bare cavern. Still, he picked up Maggie’s briefcase and shielded Sarah with it as he moved cautiously toward the other end of the building. “Hush,” he murmured soothingly to the fretful infant. “How are we going to become world-famous secret agents if we can’t sneak up on people? You think James Bond whimpers on the job? You think Sherlock Holmes fusses?”
    She whimpered on. Easy to see why the great detectives were not family men. Well, at least there was no danger of panicking someone by a too-stealthy