Read Online Call Me Killer by Linda Barlow - Free Book Online Page B

internet. I couldn't mine web data the way she could, but if she went to an elite university, there must be traces of her out there. “So what were you doing in the slums last night?”
    “Research.”
    “Research?” This sounded totally bogus. “What kind of research were you doing in such a bad part of town? You told me you were on spring break.”
    “Some kids head for the beaches, but me, I go to the projects. I figured I'd visit Mom, and check out the sex worker lifestyle. Not such a good choice, obviously.”
    “The Negotiable Pleasure Engineer?”
    She grinned, probably because I recalled her terminology. “LaVerle's okay, even if she is a whore. My real mom has been pissing me off lately. She doesn't understand why I don't want to spend all my time with her.”
    “So you'd rather hang with an accused killer?”
    She shrugged. I still didn't like her story. She was lying about something, but I wasn't sure which part.
    “Who was the guy with the shotgun?”
    “I told you. He's LaVerle's boyfriend.”
    “You mean her pimp?”
    “Nah, she runs her own business. Ray's a guy she's been hooking up with. I think he helps out with the rent. She claims he's not so bad, but sometimes he forgets to take his meds, or maybe he takes too many, and then he's liable to freak out.” She paused, not looking quite as confident as usual. “He scares the shit out of me.”
    “You should stay away from him,” I said, as if I had any right to give advice.
    She shivered. “Believe me, I intend to. I wish LaVerle would dump the guy. I worry about her.”
    And I'd thought my family had it bad, living in a college town where taxes were high and my mom had to struggle to make ends meet as a hairdresser. “What does your actual mom do for work?”
    An odd gleam showed up in her eyes. “Let's just say she gets paid to show off her boobs, bounce her long hair, smile, and sway her hips for a lot of admiring males.”
    “So she's, like, an exotic dancer?”
    I noticed she was avoiding my eyes, but I had no idea what that meant. “Something like that.”
    I was trying to get my mind around the idea of somebody's mom being either a prostitute or a stripper. As far as I knew, it had been a long time since my mom had shown her boobs to anybody. Gross.
    “Well, it sounds like you've come from a tough background.”
    She burst out laughing. I guess she saw disapproval in my expression because she controlled herself and said, “Sorry. Not laughing at you. Something just struck me funny. But yeah, I guess there are some things about my background that were tough.”
    Even though she pissed me off, at the same time I was feeling a kind of reluctant admiration. I tended to feel sorry for myself because I'd grown up poor in a rich town. I'd always been envious of the kids in my school who had more of everything than me and my brother had.
    But we'd gone to good schools and our mom had always provided for us, even when she'd had to work two jobs. She hadn't had to sell her body or take on crazy, whacked out boyfriends to make the rent.
    Rory had pulled herself out of her environment—which had been real sketchy if that place where she'd jumped into my car was any indication—and set herself up at one of the best universities in the country. Unlike Hadley, who'd been given a fancy new car on her sixteenth birthday and whose daddy was probably a billionaire, Rory was more like me. Worse off than me, in fact.
    But she was on her way up and out. I could respect that.
    “How the hell can you afford MIT?”
    She shrugged, still avoiding looking directly at me. She seemed furtive. Was she lying about the MIT thing? “Scholarships. Loans. The usual.”
    “Do you have a job lined up for after graduation?”
    Her features had settled into a “bored now” expression. “What is this, show and tell? I've answered your questions. Can we please return to clearing your ass of murder?”
    “I want to know why you came back. Why you're even