Read Online Murder in a Nice Neighborhood by Lora Roberts - Free Book Online Page B

scent were the epitome of rose-ness.
    Through the greenhouse’s open door, I could see the workbench scattered with fascinating tools. But I still argued with myself. Only a fool would fiddle with plants while murder charges swirled round her head.
    But then, I’ve never claimed any particular degree of sagacity.
    “I want to stay with my bus,” I said to Claudia, finally. “But I’ll park it back here by your garage. I can get the meals and help in the garden for a couple of hours in the mornings. I have commitments for the rest of the time. And the police will want to know I’m staying here; they may hang around a lot and bother you.”
    Claudia, her face triumphant, waved the police away with a majestic hand. “They won’t bother me,” she said, and I could believe it. “The garage is rather dilapidated but you won’t mind that. And you can have the bathroom off the kitchen for yourself, if you’d like.” She mentioned the money she would pay, and I told her it was too much. We argued about it all the way down the path to her back door. I didn’t win. Not many do, I fancy, when they come up against Claudia.
    Flushed with victory, she rested for a minute before climbing the back steps. “You should sleep in the house,” she said, returning to the attack. “More comfortable for you, and less dangerous.”
    “Dangerous?” The conversation was totally out of my control now. Claudia began to struggle up the steps, and I boosted her a little from behind. “I’ve never had any problems.”
    “Until now.” Claudia threw open the back door and invited me to enter with another one of those queenly sweeps of the hand. “Don’t you see? If someone has it in for you, you’re about as safe inside that van of yours as a sardine in a tin.”
     

Chapter 11
     
    I refused to sleep in the house. I began to wonder if I should even work for Claudia, and, as if she saw her prey vanishing, she stopped pressing me. She was out of breath, anyway, by the time she made it into an old overstuffed rocking chair that was parked, higgledy-piggledy, by the kitchen door. At her request, I put the kettle on for some coffee.
    The coffee she intended to drink was an enormous jar of instant, on the counter beside the stove. There were some tea bags in an old cardboard box; I don’t care for Lipton, but in a pinch I’ll drink it. In the refrigerator were a pint of soured milk and half a head of exhausted iceberg lettuce. The cupboard held several little tubs of Cup o’ Noodles and one loaf of bread, half-eaten, with attractive blue mold spots blossoming on it.
    This last Claudia regarded with interest. “I’ve always wondered what you have to do to bread mold to turn it into penicillin,” she remarked.
    “Is this all the food you have?” I looked deeper into the cupboard. There were a few crackers, some vintage Worcestershire sauce, and a jar of home-canned peaches, the top ominously domed. I threw it away.
    “Haven’t been to the market for a while,” Claudia said vaguely. “Usually I walk downtown for lunch.” She glared down at her swollen ankle.
    I made a list, more hindered than helped by her suggestions, and left her with the ankle wrapped in ice and a stack of ancient diaries at her elbow that pertained to her research into the life of Juana Briones, her next biography subject. She gave me a blank check to the closest market and probably forgot about me as soon as I walked out the door.
    It was still fairly early—shortly after ten. My whole routine was upset. Usually by this time I would be at the library, ready to work on research, or parked near Rinconada Park, typing up a manuscript to send out. Now, in my new role as gardener/cook/handyperson/murder suspect, I was shopping. Life is strange.
    Outside the Whole Foods was a pack of newspaper machines. I never buy newspapers, but I like to scan the headlines through the machines’ glass doors. The Redwood Crier had it on the front page, above the fold. I could