Read Online Simmer Down by Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant - Free Book Online Page B

appliances. I think both of us felt embarrassed by our disappointment that the evening had obviously been less about Josh’s food than one would have hoped, so we had kept repeating things like, “How awful!” and “Poor man!”
    Josh had left early to go in to Simmer and had obviously forgotten his cell phone, a lapse that showed how tired he must’ve been when he’d left. But with only two days until New Year’s Eve and the opening, he had a mountain of work to tackle. His phone had been ringing constantly over the past few weeks as he set up purveyors to handle the restaurant’s food supply and searched for kitchen staff. I’d better pick up the phone and give whoever was calling Simmer’s number.
    “Josh’s phone,” I murmured, still half asleep.
    “What? Who is this? I need Josh!” a woman shrieked insanely.
    I completely hate it when someone calls me and then demands to know who picked up the phone. “Who is this?” I asked calmly.
    “Who is this ?” she repeated even more hysterically. “Give Josh the phone now!”
    “This is Chloe. Josh can’t come to the phone. Can I take a message?”
    “What? No, you can’t take a message. This is Hannah, and I’ve been at the police station all night, where I’ve been terrorized by a bunch of idiots who want to know everything about the Full Moon Group and what happened last night, where I was and what I saw! What is wrong with this city? Josh needs to come get me. Please!”
    Oh, God. Even I felt sorry for her. Since she’d spent the entire night at the police station, it was no wonder she was coming unglued. But didn’t she have anybody else in Boston to call besides her ex-boyfriend? Still, there was a limit to how nice I was going to be to Hannah, who’d just threatened to steal Josh back. Not that he’d want her. Even so.
    “Are you still at the police station?” I asked.
    She whimpered. “Yes, and I don’t have a car and I don’t even know how to get home.”
    “All right, give me the address. And then go wait outside.”
    I vaguely recognized the address she gave me, but never having been held for questioning, I had no picture in my mind of exactly where the police station was. Josh knew nearly every single street in this city and would’ve known exactly how to get there. As he explained it, he’d been lost in every possible location while driving around looking for undiscovered markets where he could buy unusual ingredients and ethnic specialties. But there was no way I was going to call him and send him Hannah’s way. I just hoped I knew where I was going.
    Josh had told me last night that Hannah was a tough, independent woman who usually got weepy and needy only when her tears and pleas served a purpose. He had said that even he had thought she’d looked pretty shaken up after finding Oliver’s body. At a guess, Hannah had sensed his sympathy, and this morning phone call of hers was an effort to play on it.
    Although I was willing to drive into Boston to get Hannah, I was hardly going to roll out of bed in my pajamas and race downtown without making an effort to look at least semidecent. Even after a night of what I hoped had been relentless interrogation under bright lights, Hannah probably retained her neat-as-a-pin look, and I was not about to be shown up by Josh’s ex. Besides, rescuing Hannah, I told myself, was a test of social work professionalism; I was off to meet with a traumatized client and had an obligation to look professional. As it turned out, my professionalism translated into a tight shirt over a heavily padded bra, skintight pants, and tall black boots, not to mention the twenty minutes with a flatiron needed to calm down the effects of last night’s humidity on my hair. It had cooled off today, but it was still abnormally warm for December in Boston.
    I then spent six minutes staring at Ken the hermit crab in an effort to determine whether he was alive or not. There did appear to be some crab tracks in the