Read Online Close Call by Laura Disilverio - Free Book Online

the windows, warming the cream-colored walls and the brick tile floors of their Mount Vernon–area home. It highlighted the gouges and indentions on the oak plank table that had been in her mother’s family for generations. In a rare burst of sentimentality, Connie had refused to replace the table when she’d had the kitchen redone five years ago. Sydney scraped at a purple mark with a thumbnail; probably a stain that had been there for years.
    Without looking up, she knew her mother was studying her. She sniffed, grateful the tears had finally stopped. For now. She knew there’d be more when she was alone. Her eyes felt swollen, puffed up like ping-pong balls, and her nose was raw from where she’d kleenexed it repeatedly. She took a long swallow from the mug, both hands cupped around it. Despite the sunshine flooding the kitchen, she was cold.
    The last time she’d felt so cold was a year ago March when she and Jason had gone hiking in the Poconos and been caught in a freak snowstorm. Jason, raised in upstate New York, had known what to do, fashioning a shallow snow cave to shelter them from the wind. He was good at practical stuff like that; could fix his bike or replace a broken window, too. They’d huddled together, legs intertwined, testing each other for hypothermia, until the wind died down and they could see where they were going. That was the first time Jason had told her he loved her, whispering it in her ear as the wind howled. Sydney pushed away the memories, took another swallow of tea, and topped up the half-empty mug from the Wild Turkey bottle sitting within arm’s reach. Connie had abandoned tea for straight bourbon half an hour earlier.
    Silence lingered between mother and daughter, more noticeable now that Sydney had stopped crying. Connie and her younger daughter had never been on the same wavelength, as the saying goes, and Jason’s death hadn’t changed that. Something about the situation—Sydney’s grief, the fact that Jason was murdered?—was making her antsy. Her foot tapped against the table leg and she sprang up to put more hot water on to boil. Sydney watched her fill the copper teapot, her knuckles gleaming white from her grip on the handle, and then switch on the gas burner.
    She stared into the flames for a moment, clearly not wanting to return to the table in the breakfast nook where Sydney sat. Then, grabbing a sponge, she sopped up a water dribble from the granite counter. She looked incongruous, Sydney thought, holding a sponge while dressed in tennis whites with a platinum Patek Philippe watch on one bony wrist and a courtesan’s nest egg in diamonds encircling the other.
    â€œI think Jason was killed instead of me,” Sydney said into the silence. The raspiness of her voice surprised her. From the crying, she guessed.
    â€œThat doesn’t sound very likely.” Connie’s gaze fastened on her daughter momentarily before she carried the sponge to the sink and rinsed it.
    â€œI’ve been thinking about it,” Sydney said, the words coming slowly. “No one would want to kill Jason. It was me.” She told her mother about taking the wrong cell phone, listening to the caller who wanted to make the Montoya job look like an accident. “The killer must think I can identify him or something. He killed Jason by mistake because he was at the house. I told the detectives, but they didn’t believe me.”
    Connie came to the table and sank into a chair with the perfect posture Sydney had always envied. Pulling a cigarette from a pack on the table, she fiddled with it, turning it over and over between her fingers. She’d quit smoking a decade ago but still carried a cigarette with her wherever she went. When one wore out, crumbled to tobacco flakes, she’d appropriate another. One pack could last weeks.
    Her brows rose in skeptical arches. “Don’t you think the simplest explanation is that