Read Online Barrington Street Blues by Anne Emery - Free Book Online Page A

you keep a bottle of Glenfiddich in your desk drawer?”
    â€œUsed to, but I just couldn’t keep it in stock.”
    â€œYeah, that’s what I figured.” She sipped her drink, and sipped it again.
    The widow was about five feet four inches tall, with a hefty build that must have been voluptuous a few years back. Mavis’s hair was an unlikely shade of red and was pouffed to look as if it had been blown by the wind. Her eyes were done up with gobs of mascara, her large mouth painted a fire-engine red. She had an elaborate scarf draped over her shoulders.
    â€œI know who you are,” she announced, after lighting up a smoke and appraising me for a few moments. “You used to play in a band with Ed Johnson and those guys. Blues, right? I used to go listen to you sometimes with Dice, at the Flying Shag.” That was the nickname for a dive called the Flying Stag, where my band used to have a weekly gig. “We were usually pissed by the time you came on, but I think you were good.”
    â€œYeah, our band is called Functus. We still play, at least for ourselves.”
    â€œFunctus, that’s it. Some legal word. What’s it mean, anyway?”
    â€œIt comes from
functus officio
, which means that a judge is without further authority or legal competence because he’s finished with the case. But we just liked the sound of it.”
    â€œOkay. I thought it was Fucked Us. For years. But, as I say, I was piss drunk every time I was at the Shag. You always wore faded jeans and worn-out T-shirts. You were really cute. Still are. You were finishing law school when Dice started. Yeah, it’s coming back to me now. You married?”
    â€œWell . . .”
    â€œYeah, right, never mind. Dickie!” She called to the bartenderwithout turning around. “Did somebody come in and break your arms when I wasn’t looking?”
    â€œComing right up, babe.”
    â€œWhat do you do, Mavis?” I asked her, when Dickie departed after delivering her fresh drink. “Where do you work?”
    â€œI’m a fed. Tax auditor.”
    I tried not to show my surprise but I was obviously unsuccessful. She looked at me, laughed, and raised her glass before downing half her Scotch.
    I decided to get to the point before it was too late. “I was just wondering about Dice.”
    â€œWeren’t we all!”
    â€œDid he have a gun?”
    â€œOh, yeah, he had a gun. I was a little worried about it, that we might be in a fight some time and it might escalate to armed conflict. With me unarmed.”
    â€œYou were seriously worried?”
    â€œWell, not really.”
    â€œSo he had a gun. What kind was it, do you know?”
    â€œSomething his dad took off the Hun during the war. A Luger, I think it was.”
    â€œWhere is it now?”
    â€œI haven’t a clue. Why?”
    â€œYou don’t have it.”
    â€œNo. Why?”
    â€œBecause a gun just like it turned up at the scene of a murder-suicide I’m looking into.”
    â€œReally. Well, I never saw it again, after . . .”
    â€œAfter he died?”
    â€œYeah. I don’t know what happened to it. He kept it in a drawer in his office. Brought it out once in a while to use as a prop at party time.” Here, she let out a loud squawk of laughter. “Pointed it at people as a joke.”
    â€œWas it loaded?”
    â€œYeah, at least sometimes it was, because one night he fired it at the wall of his office. The bullet’s probably still there.”
    â€œHis office? Why?”
    She gave an elaborate shrug. “Who knows?”
    â€œWell, were there people with him at the time?”
    â€œCouple of friends. We stopped in there after the bars closed.”
    â€œYou say you never saw the gun after your husband died.”
    â€œNo. I never found it when I cleaned out his things. It wasn’t in the house and it wasn’t in the office.”
    â€œCan you remember