Read Online One Fool At Least by Julia Buckley - Free Book Online

them together. The mother, too.”
    “Libby?” I asked. I pictured Libby holding Pat’s hand on the plane. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
    “Right. And lots of others. He was good looking, I’ll give him that. But Slider, he’d been hanging around Finn the most. Finn was even letting him hang out in the bar, even though he was under age. And he was there that night Finn died; I know because I was, too. Kid came wandering in after some party and just hung out. Then the next day Finn was dead and Slider was gone.”
    “But lots of people were there, I imagine. Why does your boss want Slider?”
    I adjusted my leg, trying to find a placement that didn’t cause pain. I failed.
    “I dunno. It’s not my business, but obviously he wants Slider to come in and answer questions. He had to answer questions, too, when the police talked to him.”
    “So why go to the lengths of kidnapping me? Why not let the police find Slider? And why, Randy, are you willing to do it? Do you know you’ll go to jail for this? And how far is it going to go? Does your boss plan to kill me?” I asked, chilled by my own words.
    “Don’t be silly,” Randy said, his eyes flicking back to the game. “You weren’t even supposed to—”
    “Supposed to what?”
    He scratched his ear.
    “Supposed to what, Randy? Was I not supposed to be here?”
    Randy cleared his throat. I heard Jim yelling in the kitchen, saying “We thought that’s what you wanted, for fuck’s sake! Now what the hell am I supposed to do with her?”
    I wasn’t supposed to be here
, I realized with a start. It wasn’t me that they had been told to detain. I had simply been easy, falling down the stairs as I did, waiting in the wheelchair like a sitting duck.
    “Randy, you were supposed to get Molly, weren’t you? You were supposed to grab Molly, because she would bring Slider out of the woodwork. Right?” And even as I said it I knew it was true. Slider was out there; he had taken Molly’s food, he had stayed close to her house. If Molly went missing, Slider would come out, or so someone thought.
    Randy ignored me, his chin jutting stubbornly. I sat for a while, stewing. Olaf finally ended his sinister phone call and came in to watch the game with Randy. He was angry, and his boss had obviously been angry. He had taken the wrong girl.
    “Hey, guys,” I said. “I’m still really hungry. Can we order a pizza? I like pepperoni.”
    Olaf stared at me for a while, shaking a cigarette out of his pack. “We’d be real stupid to order a pizza, so you could yell bloody murder to the delivery guy.”
    “I’m just really hungry. What if I promise to be quiet? I mean, I think the police are going to find me soon anyway, but I’d like to have something to eat while I wait.” I tried out my earnest look.
    Randy piped, “We don’t have shit to eat in here. You’d think he’d of left us some supplies, the cheap bastard. I thought he was going to have the kid see to it. They don’t stock these rental houses, and he should know that.”
    Jim snorted. “The kid don’t do anything he says. Why do you think he lives in that cheap-ass house and does odd jobs when he could just take his Daddy’s money? It’s all just an act to piss Dad off. Besides, he’s in the big house half the time, lying around and drinking the old man’s liquor.”
    “So about the pizza?” I said.
    Olaf shrugged, still looking at me. “I suppose we could do that. You’d have to keep quiet when the delivery guy came. We’ll have to see that you’re out of the room.”
    “Sure. Thanks,” I said.
    Olaf disappeared into the kitchen again, and once more I heard his voice on the phone. When he returned, he said, “Forty minutes. Oh, do you believe that fumble? They pay those guys a million billion fuckin dollars to do crap like that.”
    I tried to summon up some football knowledge to get in good with the guys. Nothing happened. My brain must have been addled by the caffeine and pain-killer