Read Online Rock Chick 01 by Kristen Ashley - Free Book Online

subject. “When do
you close?”
    “Six.”
    “Don’t leave the store. I’ll come by tonight
at six to pick you up.”
    “Lee…”
    “See you at six.”
    Then he hung up.
    Rat bastard.
    * * * * *
    Ally came back to get me with news of no
Rosie at Rosie’s house.
    I asked if there was any Lee at Rosie’s house
and that was a negatory too.
    We took off to go see Rosie’s friend,
emergency contact numero uno. He had a house in the Highlands area.
Great old houses and bungalows, though Rosie’s friend didn’t live
in one that had been renovated. For that matter, he didn’t live in
a block that had a single house that had been renovated. Or in a
block that had a single house with more than a dozen blades of
genuine grass growing in their yards or decent curtains in their
windows. It was semi-wasteland.
    We knocked to no answer.
    We sat in my car and called the house number
on my cell phone, no answer.
    We scanned the neighborhood and Ally pointed
to the end of the block.
    We got out of the car and walked to the
corner Stop & Stab which had surprisingly not been crushed by
the overabundance of Denver’s convenience stores. A guy of Arab
descent stood behind the counter.
    We walked up to him and he smiled.
    “You want gum?” he asked.
    “No, we’re…” I started to say.
    “Cigarettes? They’re bad for you but I have
to sell them or I’ll go bust. Everyone in this neighborhood smokes
cigarettes.”
    I shook my head and then wondered briefly why
Lee smelled like tobacco, I hadn’t seen him smoke since he
enlisted.
    I noticed Ally staring at me like,
“ Hello? ” and I shook out of my Lee Reverie.
    “You know Rosie Coltrane?”
    “You’re not buying goods?” the counter man
asked, looking both disappointed and defeated.
    I couldn’t help myself, he immediately made
me sad.
    “Yes, mints,” I grabbed a pack of mints and
put it on the counter.
    He stared at the mints.
    I stared at the mints.
    Ally stared at the mints.
    The mints seemed lonely and the purchase of
the mints was not going to do anything to help feed this man’s
family.
    I put another pack of mints on the counter,
followed it with two candy bars and then walked over to the fridge
and grabbed two bottles of water and two diet pops.
    On the way back to the counter, I grabbed a
box of cream-filled, prepackaged cupcakes. I hadn’t had a cupcake
in ages.
    He happily started ringing up my purchases.
“Who are you looking for again?”
    “Rosie Coltrane. He works for me and didn’t
come into work today and I’m worried,” I lied.
    I was a good liar, I’d been doing it since
Lee, Ally and I were caught behind the garage trying to smoke
leaves when Ally and I were eight and Lee was eleven. I came up
with the imaginative excuse that we were thinking about roasting
marshmallows but didn’t know how. Malcolm bought it, kids,
marshmallows, my cute, angelic smile. It all seemed benign and
plausible.
    After we got off with just a lecture about
fire safety and the danger of matches, Lee tousled my hair.
    Happy memories.
    “I do not know a man named Rosie. What kind
of man has a name like Rosie?”
    “Rosey Grier?” Ally tried.
    “I don’t know a Rosey Grier either,” the
counter man said.
    “Football player? Helped catch Sirhan
Sirhan?” Ally prompted.
    “I don’t follow American football. I know no
Sirhan Sirhan. Is he a football player too?”
    “No, he assassinated Bobby Kennedy,” Ally
explained.
    “Oh my gracious! I certainly don’t know of
him!” the counter man exclaimed, horrified.
    I decided to cut into the history lesson.
“Our Rosie doesn’t live around here but his friend does, down and
across the street about four houses. His name is Tim Shubert.”
    “I know Tim, he buys lots of cheese puffs and
frozen pizzas.”
    If Tim was a stoner the caliber of Rosie, I
had no doubt he bought a lot of cheese puffs and pizzas.
    “Rosie’s thin, about five foot six, dirty
blond hair, looks a bit like Kurt Cobain but his face