What Laurel Sees: a love story (A Redeeming Romance Mystery) Read Online Free Page B

refreshing.”
    “Think you could move?” Joe was hardly inclined to spar.
    Clay stood, then slid aside, barely enough so that Joe could unlock the door and enter. Clay followed uninvited. As always. “Actually, Joe, it’s funny you should ask. About me moving.”
    Joe set his produce on the kitchen counter. Stella meowed at his feet. Joe opened a bag of dried cat food, then almost automatically, he scooped some into Stella’s bowl. “You got evicted again.”
    Clay sashayed across the apartment. “How did you know? That’s amazing. You’re like that, you know that guy that was on...”
    “Not in the mood, Clay.”
    Clay just shrugged. He pulled the produce out of Joe’s bag and spread it out across the counter. “Mmm, health kick. I’m thinking of detoxing myself.”
    Detoxing? What exactly did Clay mean by that?
    “Oh, relax,” Clay said, “Did I not vow to you I was off the stuff?”
    “Several times.” Another siren wailed.
    “And I am.” Clay examined an artichoke. “I’m talking about that detox thing where you do the herbs and the veggies and blast out your pipes.”
    Joe freshened Stella’s water. He would not play Clay’s game, especially with that elephant lumbering around the room. “Are you in any way cognizant that you had an obligation this morning?”
    “What, I was supposed to go like this?” Clay swept a hand across his sweats. “Seven hours I was quarantined at the club. We were all stuck there from like ten p.m. till after five this the morning—some bogus meningitis scare. Finally, I get home, and I’m locked out. Everything I own is in the alley. Just dumped on the filthy cement. So, I spent the next three hours sorting through my stuff. I had to just pitch what I couldn’t carry. After that, I made a resolution.”
    “What now?” Joe clenched his jaw. Why had he even asked when he didn’t really want to know?
    “I’m not going to play the victim anymore. It doesn’t suit me.” There was a sudden vulnerability in Clay’s voice. “I’m not going to parade around at some politically greased parole hearing so some board that doesn’t know jack can snark at me like I was the pitiful, freakish result of the dysfunction of the priesthood. Can you understand that?”
    Joe allowed himself to soften a bit. “I guess.” He did understand, better than Clay knew.
    Clay perched on a barstool. He began arranging fruit into a bowl on the counter. “You okay if I, you know, hang for a while?” Clay raised his hands. “It won’t be long, I promise because... Okay, get this. Last night, this agent—no, no—a manager I was quarantined with, he left me his card.” Clay pulled the card out of his pocket and slid it across the counter to Joe.
    Joe took a gander at the card. It was an expensive bond. He turned it over and checked the back. Nice printing quality. Handsomely engraved. Still—Clay and a real agent—it just didn’t add up. “You heard of this guy?”
    “Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve read about him. I’ve written to him, like a billion queries. He’s totally legit.”
    Cynicism rose in Joe’s throat. He bit the inside of his cheek. Clay was too trusting, still so naive. He was always jumping to conclusions this way.
    “I am good, you know.” Clay’s voice took on a defensive tone. “And it is entirely possible that a bona fide judge of talent deemed me worthy of representation.”
    “So, call him.”
    “I plan to.”
    What else could Joe say? He put away the rest of his groceries in stony silence. Clay just sat there, picking at his fingernail polish. Soon, there would be little red chips of that junk, all over the place where Joe prepared his food.
    Joe forced himself to walk away.
    Long ago, he’d learned that it was easier not to get into it with Clay over minutia. Not with more monumental matters on his mind. “Zoring walked this morning.”
    Clay shrugged. He presumed to peel an orange for himself. “Yeah, I figured.”
    Outside, more sirens wailed