Read Online The Glass Highway by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online

her damp cloth into the sink and looked back at me. “What?”
    “Hopping around barefoot on cold linoleum. That’s begging for it this time of year, especially for someone from a warm climate.”
    She finished wringing, draped the cloth over a plastic towel bar, and tilted her hips back against the sink, wiping her hands off on her plain white apron. She had large dark eyes and hollows in her cheeks, as if she’d had her back teeth dragged out in pursuit of that lean hungry look. I didn’t think girls did that anymore. “Who are you working for, Mr. Walker?”
    It doesn’t pay to show surprise too often in my work, but now and then I slide, especially when I don’t know I’m working. She saw it and rearranged her features quickly.
    “What I mean is,” she said, “you must be a secret agent or something. Most people think I’m a native.”
    I did a little rearranging of my own. “It’s not obvious. You pronounce some words a little too carefully for someone who grew up with the language. South America, right?”
    She nodded quickly. “Bolivia. My parents brought me here when I was eight. My father was American, but he was raised in Chile. I spoke English in school and Spanish at home. I still tend to slip into it when I get mad, though not as much as I used to.”
    “Do your parents live around here?”
    “They were killed five years ago in an auto accident. Don’t say you’re sorry. It was five years ago.”
    “I wasn’t going to.” I flipped my butt into the sink. It spat and died. “Iroquois Heights is a steep climb for an orphan from a poor country.”
    “I have an outside income. Are you being a detective or just a busybody?”
    “How would you have me?”
    Her smile was fleeting. “I think I would have you quiet.”
    “That’s too tall an order. I like to talk.” I found some dust on my knees and brushed it off. It was getting so I couldn’t keep a suit clean anymore. “I guess he’s got it pretty bad. Bud. Twenty-year-old boys who have lived at home all their lives don’t turn their back on Mom’s tuna casserole for just anything with long hair and a high voice.”
    “Bud’s in love with the idea of independence, that’s all. He just hasn’t figured out yet that it won’t last any longer than his savings. Also he has a hero complex like any other twenty-year-old boy who reads too much. He should go to school and prepare for a career. That’s what I’d do if I had rich parents. And I doubt that his mother’s cooked a meal since she married his stepfather.”
    “That’s exactly what his mother said. About school, I mean. I can see why you and she don’t get along. Did you want Bud to move in?”
    “That’s a very personal question,” she said. “What makes you think I’d answer it?”
    “Fern Esterhazy says it’s my pretty brown eyes.”
    She laughed. The transformation was like emerging from a tunnel into bright sunlight. “I like Fern. She wants everyone to think she’s a tramp, but she’s a nice girl underneath.”
    “Underneath what?”
    That dulled her amusement a little. She said, “I like you too, even though you’re not as funny as you seem to think you are. I don’t know if I wanted him to move in. I didn’t not want him to. Or is that the same thing?”
    “Not by a mile. I don’t want to lug around a gun, but there are times when I don’t not want to, like every time I come to this town.”
    “What’s wrong with Iroquois Heights?”
    “Let’s see. The city prosecutor runs the town and he’s a crook. The police department has several hundred thousand federal revenue-sharing dollars tied up in enough electronic flash to remake Star Wars, but what the cops get the most use out of is their twelve-volt cattle prods. Any Saturday night you can ring three longs and two shorts on some rich resident’s doorbell and be shown into the basement where a dogfight is going on. There’s a former city attorney named Stillson on the main drag who specializes