Read Online First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones - Free Book Online Page B

back. So when I saw Garrett in the hall, leaning against my office door, waiting for me, I realized he must have jumped to the fire escape and climbed in through the window.
    Show-off.
    “Do you remember the part about my dad being an ex-cop? What are you doing here?” I asked, annoyance hardening my voice. He was wearing a white T-shirt, dark jacket, and a nice-fitting pair of jeans.
    He straightened and raised a questioning brow. “Any reason you took an elevator that travels at the speed of molasses in January instead of the stairs?”
    Garrett was a looker, damn him, with his dark skin and smoldering gray eyes, but that was as far as it went for me. Any minute amount of attraction I may previously have harbored was now buried beneath a thick layer of resentment and animosity. And as far as I was concerned, that was exactly where it would stay.
    I let my irritated facial expression answer for me, unlocked the heavy wooden door to my office, then looked past Garrett to the three departed visitors who’d also been waiting for me.
    “Glad you could join us,” I said to Barber. “You’re much taller vertically.”
    Sussman elbowed him in a teasing gesture while Garrett strode into my office, apparently refusing to watch me talk to wallpaper.
    “Sorry about my earlier behavior,” Barber said. “I guess I kind of lost it.”
    His apology left me feeling guilty for not being more … I don’t know, supportive. Maybe I needed sensitivity training. I once signed up for an anger management class, but the instructor pissed me off.
    “I have no room to judge you,” I said, patting Barber on the shoulder. “I’ve never died. Not officially.”
    “Officially?” Sussman asked.
    “Long story.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Elizabeth said. “Can we get inside? I figure I don’t have much time left, and I want to get in all the ogling at tall, dark, and skeptic that I can. Why couldn’t I have met him yesterday? I could’ve died happy.”
    I knew how she felt. I had similar feelings about Reyes.
    We stepped inside my office, which doubled as an art gallery for a friend of mine named Pari. Dark abstract paintings of life on Central lined my walls. One was a disturbing rendition of a Goth girl doing laundry, washing blood off her sleeves. The girl looked like me, a little joke, since I loathed laundry day. Thankfully, my image was difficult to make out in the frenzy of grays swirling around the scene.
    Pari was also a tattoo artist and had a shop nearby. She designed the tattoo I had on my left shoulder blade. The one of a little grim reaper enshrouded in a flowing cloak with large, innocent eyes peeping out of it. Pari was chock-full of inside jokes.
    Garrett turned toward me. I refused to acknowledge him with eye contact. Instead, I hung up my bag and started a pot of coffee just as Cookie came in the front door.
    “You in here, sweetheart?”
    “Back here,” I called to her. “I’ve started the coffee.” I kept the coffeepot in my office on the pretense of monitoring Cookie’s caffeine intake. Actually, it was my answer to potpourri.
    “Coffee. Thank the gods,” Cookie said as she opened the door between her office and mine. “Oh.” She saw Garrett. “Mr. Swopes, I didn’t realize—”
    “He was just leaving,” I told her.
    Garrett smiled at me, then placed the full power of his lopsided grin on Cookie.
    The bastard.
    “My, my, my,” Elizabeth said a tad too breathlessly. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
    Suppressing a helpless sigh, I watched as Cookie started to speak, stuttered something about paperwork, then waved and closed the door to give us our privacy.
    “I know exactly how she feels,” Elizabeth purred.
    I plopped into the chair behind my desk as Garrett folded himself into the seat across from me.
    “Well?” I asked.
    “Well?” he mimicked.
    “You’re not here for a social call, Swopes. What do you want? I have three murders to solve.”
    My confidence seemed to amuse him. “I was