Free Looking for Laura by Judith Arnold Page A

crowded in the tiny foyer, he shut the door and crossed his hands over his chest. He glared at Sally, waiting for her to speak.
    â€œHow come your shirt isn’t buttoned?” she asked.
    â€œLook.” He sighed but made no move to close hisshirt. “I’m on my time, okay? This is my house. I just took a shower. I don’t have to button my shirt if I don’t want to.”
    â€œThat sounds like your kind of logic,” Sally told Rosie, who nodded and wriggled her hand free from Sally’s. She wandered into the living room, Todd right behind her as if to protect his treasures from a dangerous threat. But there were no fragile treasures in the living room, as far as Sally could tell. Big, overstuffed furniture, a mess of newspapers—including the New York Times and dailies from Springfield and Boston—scattered across the coffee table, books shoved willy-nilly into built-in bookcases along one wall, a pair of athletic socks on a footstool near one of the easy chairs and an array of model cars displayed on a sideboard. Rosie raced directly to the cars, reaching for the most flamboyant, a five-inch-long dune buggy painted metallic turquoise.
    â€œDon’t touch that,” Todd snapped. Two long strides carried him across the room, enabling him to beat her to the cars by less than a second. He barred her from the display, and she poked her lower lip out in a sulky pout.
    â€œShe lost her father,” Sally reproached. “Can’t she even look at your toy cars?”
    â€œThey aren’t toys,” Todd explained, blocking the sideboard with his body as he buttoned his shirt. “I built them myself. It’s a hobby.”
    A hobby? What a quaint idea, Sally thought, studying Todd in a new light. She would never have taken him for a hobbyist. He was too important, too busy, too worldly. Paul had never had a hobby—unless getting some action on the side was considered a hobby—and Paul had been Todd’s best friend.
    â€œThey could break very easily,” he explained to Rosie, who glowered up at him.
    â€œDo you have anything else she could play with?” Sally suggested.
    Todd scowled. “I don’t have kids, and I didn’t know you were coming. So no, I don’t have anything else she could play with.”
    â€œHere, Rosie.” Sally rummaged through her tote until she located a pencil and a spiral-bound pad of lined paper. “Why don’t you draw a picture while Mr. Sloane and I talk.”
    â€œAre you gonna talk about Daddy?”
    â€œPossibly.” She handed the pad and pencil to Rosie.
    â€œDo you have any cookies?” she asked Todd, clutching the pencil in one hand and the pad in the other.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHe wasn’t expecting us,” Sally reminded her. “I’ll give you another animal cracker and you can draw a picture, okay?”
    â€œI want two animal crackers,” Rosie said.
    â€œFine.” Sally fished two crackers from the box and extended them toward Rosie, who spent a good minute shifting the pencil to the same hand that held the pad. She took the crackers and glared at Todd. Obviously, she didn’t like him. He had no cookies and he wouldn’t let her touch his precious little toy cars.
    â€œCome into the kitchen if you’re going to eat those.” Todd stalked past a dining alcove and into a small, dark kitchen that smelled of roasted chicken.
    â€œAre we interrupting your dinner?” Sally asked, following Rosie, who followed him. She honestly didn’t care if they were interrupting, but it seemed only polite to ask. Especially since the kitchen smelled so home-cooked-mealish. Was Todd a good cook? Did he go to a lot of trouble preparing meals for himself?
    Paul had hated cooking, and he’d been compulsively neat. Maybe opposites attracted in best friends as well as lovers. Or maybe he’d been cheating on Todd with another best friend, the way