Three to Get Deadly Read Online Free Page B

Wouldn’t want to be an interference.”
    “Lula,” I shouted, “don’t you dare leave without me!”
    Lula was already rounding the corner of the building. “I might even be coming down with a cold, and I wouldn’t want to pass that on to you-all.”
    “Well,” Carl said, “want to tell me about this?”
    “You mean about Lula and me being in Uncle Mo’s apartment?”
    Carl grimaced. “You’re going to make up some ridiculous story, aren’t you?”
    “Mo’s FTA. I came here looking for him,and his door was wide open. Must have been the wind.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “And then Lula and I got worried. What if Mo was injured? Like maybe he’d fallen in the bathroom and hit his head and was unconscious.”
    Carl held his hands up. “Stop. I don’t want to hear any more. Are you finished with your search?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you find Mo unconscious on the bathroom floor?”
    “No.”
    “You’re going home now, right?”
    “Right.” Carl was a good guy, but I thought breaking into Mo’s store while Carl was looking over my shoulder might be pressing my luck, so I closed Mo’s door and made sure the lock clicked.
    When I got out to the street, Lula and the Firebird were nowhere to be seen. I put my head down and walked to my parents’ house, where I was pretty sure I could mooch a ride.
    My parents lived deep in the burg in a narrow duplex that on a cold day like this would smell like chocolate pudding cooking on the stove. The effect was similar toLorelei, singing to all those sailors, sucking them in so they’d crash on the rocks.
    I walked three blocks down Ferris, and turned onto Green. The raw cold ate through my shoes and gloves and made my ears ache. I was wearing a Gore-Tex shell with a heavy fleece liner, a black turtleneck and a sweatshirt advertising my alma mater, Douglass College. I pulled the jacket hood over my head and tightened the drawstring. Very dorky, but at least my ears wouldn’t crack off like icicles.
    “What a nice surprise,” my mother said when she opened the door to me. “And we’re having roast chicken for dinner. Lots of gravy. Just like you like it.”
    “I can’t stay. I have plans.”
    “What plans? A date?”
    “Not a date. These are work plans.”
    Grandma Mazur peeked around the kitchen door. “Oh boy, you’re on a case. Who is it this time?”
    “No one you know,” I said. “It’s something small. Really, I’m doing it as a favor to Vinnie.”
    “I heard old Tom Gates got arrested for spitting in line at Social Security. Is it Tom Gates you’re after?” Grandma asked.
    “No. It’s not Tom Gates.”
    “How about that guy they were talking about in the paper today? The one who pulled that motorist through his car window by his necktie.”
    “That was just a misunderstanding,” I said. “They were in dispute over a parking space.”
    “Well, who then?” Grandma wanted to know.
    “Moses Bedemier.”
    My mother made the sign of the cross. “Holy mother of God, you’re hunting down Uncle Mo.” She threw her hands into the air. “The man is a saint!”
    “He’s not a saint. He got arrested for carrying concealed, and then he didn’t show up for a court appearance. So now I have to find him and get him rescheduled.”
    “Carrying concealed,” my mother said, rolling her eyes. “What moron would arrest a good man like Mo Bedemier for carrying concealed?”
    “Officer Gaspick.”
    “I don’t know any Officer Gaspick,” my mother said.
    “He’s new.”
    “That’s what comes of getting new cops,” Grandma said. “No telling what they might do. I bet that gun was planted on Mo. I saw a TV show the other night about how whencops want a promotion they plant drugs on people so they can arrest them. I bet that’s what happened here. I bet that Officer Gaspick planted a gun on Mo. Everybody knows Mo would never do anything wrong.”
    I was getting tired of hearing how Mo would never do anything wrong. In fact, I was beginning to wonder