Read Online Blues in the Night by Rochelle Krich - Free Book Online Page A

new house way up on Apollo. Once my sister’s asleep, she never wakes up,” she added before I could call her on it.
    “What were you doing there?” I asked, although I had a pretty good idea.
    “Fooling around.” The pink in her face had deepened. “The owners haven’t moved in yet. It’s locked, but there’s a way to get in from the back.”
    The single-minded determination of thieves and horny adolescents. “You could’ve fooled around in your own house, with your parents away and your sister asleep.”
    “We were getting high,” she admitted. “I was nervous that my sister would smell the stuff and tell my parents. Anyway, it’s way cool being in an empty house.”
    I could see that. “So what happened when the woman came out of the house?”
    “The guy came out, too,” Studs said. “He grabbed her arm and she yelled at him to get his effing hands off her. She was screaming at him, cussing him out. Eff you, eff you. She said she was going to kill herself, that he’d be sorry.”
    “What did the man say?”
    “ ‘Make sure you do it right this time.’ Something like that.”
    Nice guy, I thought. I turned to Abby. “Does that sound right?”
    She nodded.
    “Then what happened?” I asked.
    “Then she ran off, I guess all the way down to Laurel Canyon,” Studs said. “We didn’t see her again.”
    “Did he follow her?”
    “Not right away. A few minutes later we heard a car, so it must’ve been his.”
    “Which car?”
    “No idea.”
    “What time was this?”
    He shrugged. “I dunno.” Neither did Abby.
    “Where were the two of you when this was happening?”
    “In the backyard. You could hear every word.”
    “We were looking at the stars,” Abby said. “It was totally awesome.”
    “It was cool,” Studs agreed.
    Not for Lenore, I thought, who would never again see the stars. “Then how did you see him grab her?”
    “We heard yelling in the house, so we went there to see what was going down. They didn’t notice us. It was dark, and they were kind of busy.” He allowed himself a smirk.
    “Did the woman call him by his name?”
    “She called him a
couple
of names. Asshole, son of a bitch. Bastard.” The kid was off the hook now, grinning and enjoying himself.
    “I think she called him Ronnie,” Abby volunteered.
    Ronnie, or Robbie? “Did you hear him when he came back?”
    “Nope. We didn’t stick around that long. We went back to Abby’s.”
    “What about the woman? Do you know when she arrived?”
    Both of them shook their heads.
    I gave them business cards, asked them to call me if they remembered anything else, and headed back up the hill. When I looked back a moment later, they were back on the hood of the car, revving up their motors.
    The gods would be proud.

ten
    The fiancé opened the door. “Something else I can do for you?” he asked, smiling, one hand on the doorpost, the other in the pocket of his jeans. Welcome to my neighborhood.
    “Leno wasn’t on that night,” I told him.
    The smile slipped. The hand came down. “What?”
    “You said you fell asleep watching Leno, but Leno isn’t on Saturday night.” Chugging up the hill had jogged my memory and produced this nugget.
    He quickly regained his composure. “I didn’t mean Leno
specifically
,” he chided good-naturedly and chuckled. “I meant whatever was on TV. Are you reporting to Nielsen?”
    I smiled to show I appreciated his wit. “It’s Robbie Saunders, correct?” A reasonable assumption, given the argument Studs had heard, and what Lenore had said about Robbie being very angry.
    His frown confirmed it. “I’m not interested in being interviewed for your story,” he said, all traces of bonhomie gone from his voice, his body stiff as a plaster cast. “So if you’ll excuse me?” He took a step back and started to shut the door.
    “We know Lenore was here that night.”
    That stopped him. I’d debated going to Connors, and the
we
was my insurance in confronting a man who I