SISTER (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 4) Read Online Free Page A

he’d be no problem.
    “You Rhode?”
    It was brown jacket. He was holding a thick manila envelope.
    The name “Alton Rhode” is etched on the outside door of my office suite.  On the desk I was sitting at there was a nameplate that said “Alton Rhode.” The nameplate was not my idea. One of my clients in the office supply business had one made up for me after I successfully proved that his wife’s orthodontist was drilling more than her bicuspids. I swiveled my feet to the floor and turned the nameplate around and made a point of studying it.
    “I’m pretty sure I am,” I said, and then pitched the nameplate in the trash, “because if I’m not, then the three of us don’t belong here.”
    He sighed, and the badges came out. 
    “I’m Detective Broderson,” he said, hooking a thumb toward his thin partner, “and this is Detective Huntley. Worchester Homicide.”
    He said “Wooster,” which, of course, is the way it is pronounced.
    “Massachusetts,” Huntley said.
    “I know where Worchester is,” I said. “Even though you guys say it wrong. It should be “ War-chester .”  
    “What do you mean? We live there, for crissakes.”
    I wondered if they knew that I went to Holy Cross, the small Jesuit college located in Worcester. If they didn’t, I wasn’t prepared to tell them just yet. It was unlikely they’d traveled this far to sell tickets to the Worcester Policeman’s Ball. It was more likely somebody had been murdered in their fair city. When talking to homicide cops from anywhere, discretion is always the better part of valor, or candor.
    “But I’ll let the pronunciation slide,” I continued, “because you have to love a town named after a good steak sauce. Of course, the common name is Worcestershire sauce, but it was originally concocted in Worcester, England. Lea & Perrins is the best. Though I prefer Peter Lugar’s sauce myself. But there’s no beating Lea & Perrins in a Bloody Mary.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “He’s bustin’ your balls, Dick. They said he thought he was funny. All those Holy Cross boys are a riot.”
    Well, that answered that question. If they knew where I went to college, what else did they know. And why?
    They sat down without asking and pulled out notepads. Then Broderson got right to it, wanting to see my reaction. I’d used the trick myself.
    “Veronica Frost is dead. Murdered.”
    Usually when you are told that someone you haven’t seen in almost 20 years has died, you struggle to sound and look concerned. You might even have trouble remembering what they looked like, or who they were. But not if it’s the first girl you really fell in love with. The one who got away. Or, in Ronnie’s case, ran away. Even after all this time, it hit me like a blow in the solar plexus. 
    “How?”
    “Strangled. Piano wire.”
    He said it casually, but was looking at me closely for my reaction. It was another old cop trick. Ronnie had presumably not been strangled. If I was the killer, the false information might have taken me by surprise. My eyes might have given me away. It wouldn’t be proof, but homicide cops don’t only need proof, they need suspicions, someplace to go. I looked over at his partner, who had a curious expression on his face. Broderson hadn’t let him in on the ploy.  
    “When?”
    “A month ago.”
    “In Worcester.”
    “Yeah.”
    So, Ronnie wound up in Worcester, where I went to college. Small world. The irony was palpable. I had been looking forward to her visiting me at Holy Cross when she moved away.
    “When was the last time you saw her,” Huntley said.
    “Probably 20 years ago.”
    “Can you tell us where you were?”
    “Twenty years ago!”
    “No, pal, on the night she was killed.”
    Broderson looked up at the ceiling.
    “We haven’t told him when she died, Dick.” He had seen my reaction to the news and filed it away. I was not at the top of his list of suspects. But he was a pro and now tried to