Read Online The nanny murders by Merry Bloch Jones - Free Book Online

Emily to introduce two emerging permanent ones.
    “By the way, I asked Ed about your detective.” Ed was a cop, one of Susan’s pals in Homicide.
    My detective? “Stiles?” I saw him at my door, his eyes sizing me up. I still hadn’t found out why he’d called. He hadn’t called back. Maybe he hadn’t gotten my message. I should try to call again.
    “He’s new in town. A hotshot from Baltimore. Has degrees in criminology and psychology and every other ology Ed couldthink of, and he’s heading the nanny investigation, which has all the guys who are senior to him, which is basically everybody, pretty pissed off. Apparently, he does things his own way or no way, isn’t exactly a cop’s cop. But he’s supposed to be smart.”
    “So what did Ed say about the finger?”
    Susan’s voice was flat. Listless. “They haven’t matched the print yet, but Ed said it’s gotta be one of the nannies’. I didn’t say this to the others, but the cops figure those girls are dead.”
    Tamara blinked from behind the sugar bowl. I looked away, at Emily and Molly. They were engrossed in their games, holding their parallel conversation, cheerful. Oblivious.
    “No wonder you haven’t slept.”
    “It’s not only the nannies. I’m stressed out. I scream at the girls. Lisa asks me to help with her homework and I scream. Julie wants a ride somewhere and I scream. I haven’t even started my Christmas shopping. The plumbing leaks upstairs so we’ve got to redo the master bath and the ceiling under it, and we need a new roof. I’ve got those three felony cases, more coming up. My caseload’s staggering. Tim’s out of town again, has to be in L.A. off and on, commuting back and forth, probably through March. Bonita won’t be back until next week, and the sitter who’s filling in has to leave early every day but Thursday, the one day a week I don’t need her to stay. I want to scream.”
    I sat with my hands clasped, holding on. As long as I’d known her, Susan had been on overload, managing the many and complicated levels of her life tirelessly, with grace and aplomb. She could be passionate and scathingly articulate, but never frazzled. She could multitask, multitalk, and multithink. She’d been my support during my divorce, the adoption, the millions of times I’d needed a shoulder or a friend. To me, she defined stability, capability, dependability. She was my rock.
    But now, she was imploding. Coming apart.
    Susan looked at her hand and studied her wedding ring, herbrow furrowed. I knew, by her expression, that there was more. She was deciding how much to reveal. “Go on,” I said. “What?”
    She looked up, all innocence. “What do you mean, ‘what’?” “What else?”
    “Nothing else. So,” she dodged, changing the subject, “how’s work?”
    “Work’s fine. Don’t change the subject.”
    “What subject. We weren’t talking about anything.”
    I didn’t know whether to press the topic or let it go, wasn’t sure what she wanted me to do. This was a new situation for us. Suddenly, I smelled flowers.
    “Ready?”
    No, not flowers. I smelled Gladys, the waitress. Her lily of the valley toilet water.
    Gladys didn’t like waiting and punctuated passing seconds by batting her false lashes. She had large hands with long, silver sculpted nails, silver rings on every finger.
    “Can I have a milk shake, Mom?”
    “Can we get onion rings?”
    Normally, it was Susan who ordered. She naturally assumed the alpha position. Top dog, head hen, queen bee. But now, even menu items were beyond her; she had no capacity for making choices. Gladys tapped her nails on the order pad, shifted her pen, rolled her eyes, and glowered until, finally, I managed to spit out the names of enough dishes and drinks to feed the four of us and probably half the people in the place.
    Gladys scribbled on her pad and snorted off.
    “I’m starving.” Molly whined. “How long till the food comes?”
    “Don’t whine,” I said.