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

rescue the interview from the hole his partner was digging. He gave me the date without looking at his notepad. It wasn’t just another case for him. “The M.E. puts the time of death around 7 P.M.”
    Friday, May 3rd. The day I drove up to the lake to fish. The night I had the disturbing dream about Ronnie. That wasn’t something I wanted to tell the cops. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell anyone that, ever. Who would believe me? I almost didn’t believe it myself. It had to be a coincidence. Except I don’t really believe in them, either. I closed out the story about the Yankees and switched to my Lotus Organizer. After a quick glance, I said, “I was staking out the Swan Motel in Elizabeth trying to catch a woman cheating with her orthodontist.”
    “Where’s Elizabeth?”
    “Just over the Goethals Bridge in New Jersey.”
    “Go on.”
    “The good doctor showed up to fill her cavity around lunch time. I waited until they came out together, got what I needed and went to my office to download the photos. Then I went to Wagner College to work out in the gym. I was probably home by 6 P.M. I changed, packed some gear and headed upstate to fish. Got there just before 10.”
    “Where upstate?”
    “About an hour and a half north, Greenwood Lake.”
    “I suppose you can prove all of this,” Huntley said, trying to recover.
    “I can prove the motel part. You can check my cell phone calls, which will put me at the motel until about 2 P.M. The manager will also remember me, since he spotted me lurking about and I had to grease him forty bucks. My office manager was still here when I left for the gym around 4.”
    “Anyone see you at the gym?” Broderson asked.
    I couldn’t remember if my pal Dom DeRenzi, the Wagner athletic director, was at the gym that afternoon. I didn’t know if any of the kids working out would remember me.
    “Maybe,” I said.
    “Maybe you drove to Worcester instead,” Huntley said.
    “To kill someone I haven’t seen since college?”
    “So you say.”
    “In three hours?”
    “I’ve seen stranger things.”
    “You haven’t seen dick, Dick. Why don’t you let your partner here ask the goddamn questions before I lose my patience and throw you out the window?”
    I realized that I was shouting and had come halfway out of my chair. I had been flip up until then because that’s often how I react when I take an emotional hit. The news about Ronnie was beginning to sink in. The young cop shrank back and his partner stood up.
    “Sit back, pal,” he said with authority, “and calm down. Nobody is accusing you of anything. Anybody see you up at this lake?”
    “Bartender at Maloy’s Tavern. Maybe a patron or two. It was late. And fisherman lie, you know.”
    “Mostly about fish,” Broderson said.
    “You can check my EZ-PASS. Tolls will put me where I said I was.”  
    I sat back and looked at the young detective.
    “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just pissed off”
    “Catch anything?” Broderson asked.
    “Big bass. This big.” I held my hands about two feet apart. “Between the eyes.”
    Broderson smiled.
    “We spoke to some local cops, Rhode. They think you are a royal pain in the ass, but can’t see you as a murderer. But we have to chase everything down because we’ve got bupkis so far. You were on the job. You know how it goes.”
    If they had hit a stone wall, they would be reaching for straws. But I was a pretty obscure straw.
    “I’m curious. How did I pop up on the radar? You interviewing everyone Ronnie ever knew? Or just those that went to Holy Cross. And just how did you know that?”
    “The Internet is a wonderful thing,” he said. “But we had something else.”
    “Her diary,” Huntley said.
    “Diary?”
    ‘Yeah,” he said. “We found it at the bottom of a trunk in an attic. There were several names in it. But you were the one she wrote about the most.”
    “Recently?”
    A part of me hoped that was true, even if it made me more of a suspect. I had