Blackbird 10 - A Little Night Murder Read Online Free

all about you. Except he didn’t mention you were such a looker.”
    “Mickey, hmm?” Lexie sent Michael an impish look.
    Which he missed, because he was pulling me to a standing position. “Uh, Bridget, Lexie’s just a friend. This is her house. But here’s Nora.”
    Off-balance and unwieldy, I wobbled in the tall shadow of Bridget O’Halloran, shielding my eyes against the glare of the sunlight to look up into her face. She was exactly the kind of woman who appeared on
The Real Housewives
of some-such place—lots of extra hair that couldn’t possibly be natural and clothes that managed to look both expensive and very cheap indeed. She was wearing false eyelashes, but the vivid blue of her eyes gave her away. I knew instantly who she was.
    She inspected me, too. From the curl on her lip, I could see shewasn’t pleased with the picture I made. To keep the chlorine out of my hair, I had configured a less than chic topknot with a cheap banana clip. I had liberally coated my nose with white sunscreen, too. And my silly shirt wasn’t going to win any runway accolades.
    I smiled bravely, however, and put out my hand. “How do you do?”
    “How
dooo
you
dooo
?” she parroted back at me, then laughed. A laugh with an edge of hostility. “You sound like you’ve got a silver spoon shoved up your—”
    “Nora,” Michael intervened, “this is Bridget O’Halloran. My mother.”
    Lexie made an involuntary squeak in her throat and shot me a wide-eyed stare that managed to say,
His mother?
    Michael had been born the son of Big Frankie Abruzzo—the boss of most of the organized crime that still operated in southern New Jersey—and Big Frankie’s paramour, an exotic dancer who had willingly handed over her child to be raised with the rest of the Abruzzo boys by Big Frankie’s wife. Michael referred to his biological mother by her first name, and he told me he’d been in touch with her off and on his whole life. Whether Bridget still saw Big Frankie, I wasn’t sure, but judging by the diamond bracelet on her wrist and the large designer handbag on her toned arm, I guessed she was accepting generous presents from somebody with very deep pockets.
    She looked around the pool. “Nice joint you’ve got here,” she said to Lexie. “I once had a boyfriend who had a pool like this. He was a champion Olympic swimmer. He wanted to marry me, but I didn’t like the idea of living with a man who wore a Speedo all the time. You don’t have any guys in Speedos, huh? Because they’re kinda fun for the short haul.”
    “Not today,” Lexie said with a smile.
    “So,” Bridget said to me, “how come you won’t marry my son?”
    Her blunt question shocked me into a stutter. “Uh, I—I—”
    To Lexie, Michael said, “Bridget speaks her mind.”
    Bridget’s glare turned even frostier on me. “He says he asks, and you say no. Now you’re as big as a cow with his kid, and you still won’t get married? How come? You too good for him?”
    “Why—of course not.”
    “He says you’re cursed or something, and that’s why you’re putting off a wedding. What’s that all about?”
    “The Blackbird curse,” I said.
    “What kind of curse? Is it for real?”
    “My family—that is, all the women in my family—tend to be widowed young. And although I really don’t believe in that kind of thing, I admit I worry that something terrible might happen when—”
    “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Michael said. “Back off, Bridget.”
    “Hey, I’m not making judgments,” Bridget said, raising both hands as if the local sheriff had commanded her to reach for the sky. “I just don’t like the idea of some rich society girl thinking her shit doesn’t stink.”
    “Bridget!”
    “How about some iced tea?” Lexie interjected before Michael could further object to his mother’s choice of words. “Or—is it too early for gin and tonics?”
    “Gin and tonic would hit the spot,” Bridget said. “Plenty of lime.