Free Turn Up the Heat by Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant Page A

Just a lot of questions about Owen.”
    “I hope you didn’t say anything stupid, Snack.” I was worried that Snacker and Owen’s feud was somehow going to make things even worse for Owen than they already were.
    “I didn’t!” he protested. “I just answered their questions.”
    “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I’m just a little stressed out for him.”
    “Of course,” Blythe sympathized. “Listen, when all this cools down, we have to hang out again soon. I know you’ve got finals coming up, but we need a girls’ night out again, okay?”
    “You’re on,” I agreed happily. Girls’ night out with Blythe was always fun. Because I had Josh, I didn’t mind that Blythe got all the male attention when we were out together, and I enjoyed helping her filter out the losers who hit on her.
    “Yeah, girls’ night out.” Snacker was almost drooling.
    Blythe laughed. “Which does not include you!”
    “It certainly does not,” I agreed. “I’m going to see how Owen’s holding up. Catch you guys later.”
    Owen looked almost as distraught as Gavin did, although for different reasons. Owen hadn’t suffered the loss of someone he’d cared about, but it had been far from easy for Owen to find Leandra’s body in his prized truck. It would’ve been awful enough to come upon a dead body anywhere at all, of course. But in a familiar and innocent place? A place he thought of as his own? Definitely not pleasant. Then there were the practical consequences. Owen was new at the Daily Catch and a new purveyor at the restaurants where he had accounts. His boss and his clients would understand what had happened, wouldn’t they? All the same, they’d hardly be happy that he’d failed to make today’s deliveries.
    But I didn’t get a chance to talk to Owen. Before I reached him, two uniformed officers approached him and led him off for what was certain to be a long, long interview.

SEVEN
    WHEN I finally got home, I was determined to shake off the emotional effects of the murder and get some studying done for my final exams. This was Wednesday, and my first final was on Tuesday. I needed to get kicking. My place was on the third floor of an old house in Brighton, a district of Boston, and the major selling point when I rented the condo from its owner had been the parking space out front that was included in the rent. Because the neighborhood was right near a lot of colleges and big universities, it was packed with students who were always fighting over the few legal parking spots on the street. I had a small living room, an even smaller kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and a decent-sized bedroom that doubled as my homework area.
    I tossed my keys onto the coffee table in the living room and looked into the bedroom toward my desk, which had almost disappeared beneath mountains of papers and books. In my absence, a stack of articles about cultural influences on behavior disorders had toppled over and buried my keyboard. That course had been listed as Cult. Influences on Beh. Disorders , and I’d taken it to mean it was a class on cults. Still, cultural influences had turned out to be okay. Before finals, the one-bedroom condo had been small. Now it felt cramped and suffocating. I sighed and then went to the kitchen to throw on a pot of coffee. The caffeine I’d had this morning wouldn’t get me through the studying, research, and paper writing that I had ahead of me. While the pot brewed, I filled up my cat Gato’s bowl. While he ate, I stroked his silky black fur. In return, in typically cranky Gato fashion, he turned his head and bit my hand. Brat! I’ve heard that when cats bite, they’re showing affection, but the people who make that claim about cats probably say the same thing about dogs. Fido didn’t mean to chomp off a chunk of your arm and send you to the hospital for three weeks! He was just trying to tell you how much he loves you.
    I heated milk in the microwave, stirred in some sugar, and filled my cup to