Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) Read Online Free Page A

Barnburner grapevine said he was a Richie Rich from around here who’d gotten in a jam at college. He’d done the rehab thing, then started showing up at AA and NA meetings. Hard kid to read: he might be serious about staying straight, or he might be smirking his way along to satisfy the court and Daddy.
    I’d find out tomorrow.
    Checked my watch as I swung into the driveway. Almost midnight. Upstairs, Sophie’s light was off.
    Jessie’s was not.
    I sighed, climbed out, let myself in.
    Charlene was piddling around with her laptop in the kitchen/great room where we spent all our time.
    The laptop’s never far away.
    Charlene Bollinger made it to the Barnburners a few years after I did. Booze and meth had been her things, and they showed. Back then, she weighed maybe ninety, wore eye makeup that gave her a raccoon look, jitter-jumped at the slightest noise.
    The state had taken away her daughters, the ones who were up in their rooms now. For Charlene, that was the bottom you hear people talk about, the thing that finally pushed her to AA.
    Over the next few years, she worked harder than anybody else I’ve seen. Got clean, stayed clean, got the girls back. Found steady work transcribing in Westborough District Court, used that as a springboard to her own transcription-and-translation company.
    The business is a big deal now. Charlene’s a big deal.
    â€œThanks a million,” I said, setting my keys on the counter. “You stranded me up there telling my life story.”
    â€œPeople love hearing your life story.” She shut her laptop, leaned back on the red sectional, scratched the head of Dale, one of my cats. “ I love hearing your life story. That’s why I stranded you.”
    I flopped, sat, yawned. “How is she?”
    The way Charlene stiffened was all the answer I needed.
    Hell.
    You’ll never meet anybody works harder than me to stay out of soap operas. But here I was, smack in the middle of one.
    My son Roy and Charlene’s older daughter, Jessie, are the same age. A while back, when they were high school seniors, they hauled off and fell in love. Trouble was, Jessie’d just gotten out of treatment for anorexia and bulimia. Staying out of serious relationships for a year was part of her aftercare program, right there in black and white.
    Like all dumb-ass parents, Charlene and I tried to talk sense into Jessie and Roy.
    Like all dumb-ass kids, they told us to pound sand. The two of them moved to Boulder, Colorado, where she waited tables and he worked in a body shop.
    Just a few weeks ago, without a phone call or a text message, Jessie had showed up on Charlene’s doorstep. She and Roy had broken up. Jessie wouldn’t tell Charlene an awful lot, and Charlene in turn didn’t tell me everything she heard, but it was easy to see the breakup hadn’t been pretty. Neither of the kids could afford an apartment on their own, so Jessie left Colorado and landed at Charlene’s place. Roy went back to his mother, my ex. She lives in Lee, Massachusetts, about as far as you can get from me and still be in the state.
    I hate to say it, but Jessie didn’t add a whole hell of a lot to the Shrewsbury house, where her mother and her sister and I had been doing pretty well. She was as silent and rage-filled as ever. More so, really, because I’d moved in while she was gone. She slept most of the day. Went out every night, never said where or who with. Charlene didn’t know what the hell to do. Me neither.
    Worst of all, Jessie was skinny. So damn skinny it’d break your heart. Wore a baggy sweatshirt to mask it, but the way she cinched her belt to keep her jeans up was enough to make you cry.
    And you know who got the short end, as usual? Sophie, Charlene’s thirteen-year-old. She’d been happy as hell when I moved in—I love the kid like nobody’s business—had thrived, had let loose her smarts, stunning Charlene and me