Free Third Degree by Maggie Barbieri Page A

wrote some really nasty things about him on his blog.”
    “I just don’t think Tony would have shared an anecdote about blowing up a pig in Korea if he was the one who put the explosive on the car engine. Doesn’t make sense. Too obvious.”
    “Sure, it’s obvious, but Tony …” I started. He took a hard right down a one-way street and I banged into my door. “Hey!” I straightened up after he slowed down. “What are you doing? If that’s your way to get me to stop talking about this, a polite ‘shut up’ would have sufficed.”
    “Someone’s been following us since we left Tony’s.” He threw the car in park, and jumped out. I turned and saw that the car was behind us but now backing up, dangerously, down the one-way street. Crawford began running after the car, yelling at the driver to stop, who continued driving backward until they were down the narrow residential street and back out onto the main drag.
    Crawford jumped back in the car and went into reverse.
    “No! Not the backward car chase!” I said. “I’m already ready to throw up.”
    “I have to see who that is,” he said, his head facing the back of the car, his foot pressing the accelerator down almost to the floor. He swung out onto the main street and drove into the traffic, only managing to cut two cars off in the process. The Subaru was nowhere to be found and he dejectedly pulled over to see if I was still in one piece. I hit him with a salami that I had pulled from the bag from Tony’s.
    “What are you trying to do? Kill me?” I asked, my breath short after holding it during a very brief, but very tense, car chase in reverse.
    “No, I’m not trying to kill you,” he said. “But I wonder why someone would be following us. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”
    “No. Not curious. Not interested in the least.” I leaned my head against the seat rest. “About the same level of curiosity as you have for Tony and explosives. Can we please just go home now?”
    Max was her usual caring self when I walked in through the back door. “You look like shit.” Sometimes I wondered why we were friends.
    Fred grunted in agreement. They were still at the kitchen table in exactly the same positions as when I left. The screen was still torn, but the window was closed and locked. I guess I was going to be calling my friend Hernan to fix it during the week. It appeared that they were waiting for food and hadn’t moved since Crawford and I had set off on our grocery journey.
    “Did you take my dog out?” I asked.
    “I can’t find her,” Max said. She slid something into her pocketbook.
    “Was that a tape measure?” I asked.
    She smiled insincerely. “Can’t fix the screen if I don’t know how big the window is.”
    I didn’t believe a word of that. “But you didn’t know that the screen would be broken when you left for here. Or do you just carry a tape measure around in your Marc Jacobs bag?”
    “It’s a Michael Kors,” she said.
    “Whatever.” I waited. “Well?”
    “Yes, I do. I do carry a tape measure around in my pocketbook. It comes in handy when I want to measure something.”
    The conversation could have gone on indefinitely but I let it go. I grabbed the dog’s leash from the hook by the back door.
    Crawford put the bag of deli products on the counter. “Do you want me to go with you?” he asked, knowing that I was going to walk the dog in the absence of any responsible dog walkers in the house. He came over and took my cheeks in his hands. “Are you feeling better?”
    I nodded. “I just need some air,” I said. I felt like Lydia Wilmott all of a sudden; I just wanted to be alone. Walking Trixie by myself was just the ticket. “You guys eat. I don’t have much of an appetite.” I knew I wouldn’t be two minutes out of the house before those scavengers had eaten everything but the wrappers the cold cuts had come in. Max is as voracious an eater as her six-foot-five husband and my tall drink of water of a