The Merlot Murders Read Online Free Page B

sides of the road. Horses grazed serenely on stubbly brown fields and the corn was late-summer high. The traffic had petered out to a single John Deere tractor motoring amiably down the middle of the road. The driver gave way to let Eli pass, waving as we zoomed by.
    “So, what is it?”
    “Greg Knight moved back home. He’s living in Leesburg.”
    There was a long silence before I said, “When?”
    “Six months ago.”
    “How come no one told me?”
    He cleared his throat. “I don’t know.”
    He did know. “You might have warned me when you called last night,” I said.
    Eli looked over at me the way you look at a grenade after someone just pulled the pin. “You never would have gotten on that plane.”
    “Don’t be an idiot,” I said. “I just would have liked to know before I got here, that’s all. What’s he doing here, anyway? Bartending again? I thought he had some big radio job in New York. With CBS.”
    “It was ABC,” my brother said, “and he did.”
    “What happened? They fire him?”
    Eli shrugged. “How should I know? We don’t talk anymore, not like before. Like I said, he’s living in Leesburg. He’s got a job working as a deejay at WLEE. With his own nighttime call-in show. Plays jazz in between talking to insomniacs or whatever weirdos are awake at three in the morning.” He cleared his throat again. “Not that I listen.”
    For once it was my turn to look at him. “At least he won’t be at the funeral. I’d rather not see him right now and I can’t imagine he’d have the nerve to show up.”
    “Actually,” Eli said, “you will and he does. There’s something else.” He gave me the grenade pin look again. “He’s seeing Mia.”
    He knew better than anyone it was the last thing I expected to hear. “What, as her baby-sitter? He’s ten years older than she is.”
    “He’s, ah, sleeping with her.”
    “Very funny.”
    He said nothing, just worked his jaw like he was trying to loosen a piece of food that got wedged between two teeth.
    “He’s not really sleeping with her,” I said finally.
    “Don’t tell her. She thinks he is.”
    “Oh God, Eli! How could you let that happen? What happened to Ringo? Or Rocko…whatever his name was?”
    “Who?”
    “That guy she was dating. The one with the teeth.”
    “Oh. Him. He’s at some military academy in Pennsylvania. On probation.”
    “I don’t understand…” I said. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
    “You haven’t seen your sister in two years, babe. She’s changed.”
    “Well, if she listens to everything you tell her, why can’t you put a stop to this?” I banged a fist on the wide console between our seats.
    He should have been as upset as I was. He and Greg had been best friends since first grade. Then came the rain-wrecked night two years ago when Greg’s car slammed into the stone wall at the entrance to the vineyard. He’d actually gotten out and walked away, though he’d returned to watch while the Rescue Squad cut me free with the Jaws of Life. His friendship with Eli and our torrid summer affair had disintegrated into more pieces than a wall of Humpty Dumpties.
    He came to the hospital to visit me precisely once during the months I was there. A mumbled apology as though he’d forgotten to pick me up for a movie date. That was it. Those fifteen minutes were acid-etched in my memory, marking the absolute nadir of the Great Depression—mine, that is—during the era when the doctors said I might never walk again. Then I heard that he moved to New York.
    Eli wiped at a nonexistent smudge where I’d whacked the console. “Take it easy, will you? That’s hand-stitched leather. As for talking to Mia about Greg, it’s not that simple. Anyway, they’re consenting adults.”
    Amnesia would have been convenient just then. Too many images of what Greg and I had done together flashed behind my eyelids. “Maybe I could talk to her…”
    “Forget it, Luce. She’ll think it’s