Read Online Angel With a Bullet by M. C. Grant - Free Book Online Page B

inner set of doors is locked.
    â€œHello?” a woman’s singsong voice calls out from the tiny wall speaker. “Who’s there?”
    â€œIt’s Dixie Flynn of the NOW . I’ve come about the shooting upstairs.”
    â€œOh, come in.” The woman’s lilting brogue is either Irish or Scottish; if she has joined the American melting pot, she made sure to stick to the edges.
    The buzzer sounds, and I push open the second set of doors. A short distance from the elegant staircase, a petite woman dressed in purple from head to toe smiles out at me. I estimate by the wrinkles in her neck that she is in her seventies, but with her gray hair perfectly coiffed and the cut of her suit giving her a lovely figure, she appears ageless.
    â€œOh, my,” says Mrs. Stewart, “what lovely hair you have, dear. Are you no Scottish yerself?”
    I laugh. “It’s been a few generations.”
    â€œAye, I thought so. You can’t hide a Scot. Spot them a mile away. Two if I have my glasses on.”
    I laugh again. “I hope I’m not catching you on the way out, but I was wondering if I might ask a few questions?”
    â€œI was just trying this on.” She smooths the suit and reaches up to play with a large pearl and diamond bauble in her left ear that could likely pay my rent for the year. Her eyes twinkle, and she lowers her voice conspiratorially. “My son has a big function coming up at his law office and wants me to look the part. This is a Donna Karan, do yeh know her?”
    I take the question to be rhetorical, but nod anyway.
    â€œTo be honest,” she continues, “I’m more comfortable in housecoat and slippers, but if you look like the cleaning lady they try and lock you in a home and take away your money and the remote for the TV. As though being relaxed is the same as being addled.”
    I don’t know what to say. Fortunately, I don’t have to say anything.
    â€œWell, don’t just stand there. Come in, come in. What do you take in your tea? I’m brewing up.”
    Before I can reply, Mrs. Stewart is striding down the short hallway to the kitchen. I close the door and follow.
    The apartment is half the size of Diego’s, but more elegant with polished cherry hardwood floors, antique European furniture, and crystal fixtures that cast tiny rainbows on the walls and ceiling.
    I stop at the kitchen doorway and watch Mrs. Stewart scuttle from one side of the room to the other, humming contentedly. When she spots me, she waves toward the living room.
    â€œSit doon, sit doon,” she says. “I’ll get some biscuits. And don’t you fret about the furniture, a chair is just a chair no matter where it came from or what it cost.”
    The living room would have been large if not so crowded. An antique couch and two high-backed armchairs are covered in tartan shawls, and every flat surface is overflowing with knickknacks: tiny china teapots decorated with British town crests; a collection of clay animals with curled, ram-like horns and trumpet-shaped snouts with MacHaggis written on tiny brass plaques; an assortment of thimbles and spoons; a collection of well-used pipes in a wooden rack, the smell of tobacco still faint on their bowls; sets of silver coins bearing scenes of royal weddings; a framed Elvis stamp; and a waist-high bookcase packed with large-print paperbacks by Martina Cole, Ian Rankin, Stuart MacBride, Ken Follett, and Val McDermid. Sitting on top of the bookcase is a white porcelain bust of a man with unruly muttonchops.
    Despite her wealth, it seems Mrs. Stewart loves to be tacky. It reminds me of something my father often said about my mother: “You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but not the trailer park out of the girl.”
    Of course, this was usually said just before he was banished to the couch for the night.
    â€œDo you like Rabbie?” Mrs. Stewart asks as she clears a space on the