Read Online Breach of Duty (9780061739637) by Judith A. Jance - Free Book Online

place to start.
    As we headed back down the walkway, Andrew George reappeared around the corner of the house once again.
    â€œSeeing that happen to the person you love must be hell,” Sue said to me, nodding in his direction. “Which is worse—losing your mind like Andrew George there or losing the use of your body like Marcia Powell?”
    I stopped and stood beside the car long enough to watch the man disappear once more behind the side of his house.
    â€œExcuse me,” I told her. “But if I had my druthers, I’d rather not lose either one.”

Four
    I t took two passes to find Olson’s Truck Rental. Our search was complicated by a maze of oneway streets that wound in and out under a series of raised trestles. The process was made more difficult by the fact that Everett’s Summit Avenue was somehow missing from our map book. When we finally arrived at the correct storefront in a mostly industrial area, we found the front door securely locked. A cardboard sign hanging in the window, complete with a clock face, told us they would reopen at one.
    I didn’t feel particularly hungry right then, but I was more than ready for a break. One of the hazards of working with Detective Danielson has to do with her cast-iron bladder. She’s capable of going for hours on end without making a pitstop. In that regard the woman has me totally outclassed.
    â€œLooks like it’s time for lunch,” I said casually. “There must be someplace to eat around here. I didn’t see anything promising while we were driving around, did you?”
    â€œNot right here,” Sue agreed, consulting the map once more. “But Alligator Soul isn’t far.”
    â€œAlligator what?”
    â€œSoul,” she replied. “It’s a Cajun place. I ate there once before a Preservation Hall concert. Just go straight up Hewitt,” she added, pointing. “Now that I finally have my bearings, I know it isn’t far from here.”
    My mother’s training kicked in. I did as I was told.
    Everett started out over a hundred years ago as a booming sawmill town. The lumber and mills are pretty much gone, leaving an economic gap that’s been partially filled in recent years by the arrival of a Navy home port. In the downtown area, low-rise brick construction harkens back to an earlier era. People who live and/or work in Seattle proper assume we exist in a kind of cultural mecca. It disturbed my proud Denny-Regrade neighborhood sensibilities to learn that Everett, a place we regard as little more than a lowly exurb, had constructed something that sounded suspiciously like a concert hall.
    â€œPreservation Hall,” I muttered disparagingly. “Never heard of it. Where is it and how did Everett come up with the money to build something like that?”
    Sue Danielson sighed. “Preservation Hall, Beau. It’s a band, not a building. As in the French Quarter. As in New Orleans-style jazz. They were here for a concert. What kind of a rock have you been living under?”
    â€œI’ve just never cared for jazz all that much,” I returned. It was the best I could manage with a size-twelve foot stuck firmly in my mouth.
    I was still licking my culturally deprived wounds when we pulled up in front of the green awning of the Alligator Soul a few minutes later. We parked in an open space on a street without a single parking meter anywhere in sight—something else that sets Everett apart from downtown Seattle. Inside the restaurant, the young hostess gave us a choice of smoking or nonsmoking. Sue opted for the former. By the time we reached our booth at the back of the long narrow room, she had cigarettes out of her purse and was already lighting up.
    Before sliding into the booth, I made a quick dash to the men’s room. On the way I noticed that the long, narrow restaurant was clearly an old, rehabbed bar. The major decorating motif—from tablecloths to