Read Online Sweet and Deadly by Charlaine Harris - Free Book Online Page B

“Just come this way through the foyer, and don’t scuff the marble.”
    Catherine looked around as she went through the hall. Dr. Linton’s office had been a house before he bought it; now it was a house again. Her father had used the rooms at the back of the old house for examinations and storage. They were now Tom’s kitchen and bedrooms. The living room had been Dr. Linton’s waiting room; now it had cycled back. Catherine took stock of the reversion.
    â€œYou recognize, of course, my furniture period—Modern American Battered.”
    Tom’s description was accurate. His couch and chairs were covered with mismatched throws, to hide the worst holes from sight—but not from sensation, as Catherine found when she sat down.
    But the place was neater than she had expected. The couch, where Tom obviously had been lying, had a sad old trunk exactly centered before it to serve as a coffee table. On the trunk was a neat pile of magazines, a telephone aligned with the pile, and what Catherine supposed was a cigarette box beside a large cheap ashtray.
    â€œYou keep it nice,” Catherine offered.
    â€œOh, Mother Mascalco brought her boy up right,” Tom said with a grin. She noticed that Tom wasn’t sloppy in dress even on the weekend. He was wearing a sports shirt obviously straight from the laundry; and, amazingly, his jeans had creases. “The bed, I have to admit, is not made. You wouldn’t be interested in seeing the bedroom?”
    Catherine shook her head with a smile. “We wouldn’t suit,” she said. “Besides, what happened to your fiancée in Memphis? I thought one reason you took the job here was because you could drive up to see her on weekends.”
    â€œShe dumped me,” Tom said, with an attempt at lightness. “Haven’t you noticed that I’ve been lurking around here the past two weekends?”
    Well, yes, she had noticed, kind of. But she had vaguely assumed he had fetched the girl from Memphis for some weekend housekeeping. Tom’s visits to her house had been during the past two weeks, now that she came to think of it.
    â€œStuck here for nothing,” Catherine said, making a tactful effort to match Tom’s light tone. “Well, this job will look good on your résumé.”
    â€œYeah,” he said morosely. “Want something to drink? Beer, orange juice? I have some milk, too,” he added apologetically, “but I think it’s past its prime. Or dope?” He opened the cigarette box, and Catherine saw that it held at least fifteen rolled joints.
    â€œYes to the beer,” she said.
    â€œTurning into an alcoholic,” Tom said with a mocking shake of the head, as he unfolded his lanky frame from the low couch and went into the kitchen.
    â€œYou better watch out with this stuff,” Catherine called after him, putting the lid back on the cigarette box. She wandered around the room, then followed him to the kitchen. It too was neat, without being exactly clean. “This little house sits in the county, you know,” she said “and you’d have Galton to contend with rather than the town police.”
    â€œYou can’t be serious,” he said incredulously. “Why isn’t the road in front of this house the city limit? There’s only cotton fields on the other side of it! I feel like a planter every time I go out the front door!”
    â€œI don’t know,” Catherine said. She was looking around the kitchen, which her father had used for the shelving of medicines and supplies of plastic gloves and tongue depressors. The little stool Leona had used to get supplies from the top shelf was still sitting by the door. “The line runs right through my backyard.”
    Tom shook his head darkly at this piece of town planning, and Catherine wandered back out into the living room. The office—the house, she corrected herself—was as familiar to