Free Deadly Rich by Edward Stewart Page A

With her serious dark eyes and her assured movements, she reminded him exactly of her dead mother.
    “You know, you’re just like your mother. I ask how you feel, and I wind up telling you how I feel. You’re a mystery to me. I never get to find out anything about you.”
    “Why’s it so important how I feel?”
    “Because I want to know about this Josh person.”
    “Why?”
    He closed the TV Guide and slapped it back on the table. “Because sometimes people get hurt. And I don’t mean your mother—I’m talking about now. Sometimes young people get hurt. Sometimes they hurt one another.”
    “Are you talking about sex?”
    He sat there, chest tight and heaving. “Okay. If you have to know, I’m talking about a girl who got thrown off a sixth-story terrace.”
    “Wait a minute. Something just went by me. Where did that come from?”
    “It happened. And she wasn’t much older than you.” He realized he sounded angry, and he sounded angry because he didn’t know how else to get through to her. “And she probably thought she had all the answers. Just like you do sometimes.”
    “When do I think I have all the answers?”
    He tried to concentrate on his reflection and hers in the dark TV screen, tried to bring his reflection under control, tried to will himself into a sort of calm. “Tonight.”
    “Wait a minute. Are we arguing?”
    Cardozo had reached that state of brain overload where all he craved was to sit still in one half of an absolute silence and know that another person was sitting still in the other half of the same silence. “I think we’re arguing,” he said. “No, I’m arguing.”
    “What about?”
    “I guess what I’m arguing about is, people are losing one another all over this world, and I don’t want to lose you.”
    “I don’t want to lose you either.”
    He sighed. “Then why am I arguing?”
    “I don’t know.” A smile came up on her face. “You started it.”
    “Josh started it. He’s a troublemaker. Why do you want to run around with troublemakers?”
    “Dad.” She kissed, him and slid off the sofa.
    “Can’t you tell when I’m joking?”
    “No, not tonight. Are you joking?”
    “Now I’m joking. I wasn’t before, but I am now. See the smile?”
    Something lovely and caring shaped itself in her eyes. “I’m sorry about the woman who got killed and the girl who got thrown off the terrace.”
    “I know you are. Don’t worry. Nothing like that is going to happen to us.” It happened to your mother, but, so help me God, it will never happen to you. Not as long as Vince Cardozo is around.
    “I love you, Dad.”
    “And I love you too. And I’m sorry we argued.”
    “I’m not.”
    “And I want to meet Josh.”
    “You will.” She gave him a tight, quick clasp. “Good night.” He picked up the TV Guide again. He heard her slippers pad into the hallway. A moment later her bedroom door shut. “Hey,” he called. “Go to bed. I’ll take care of the dishes.”

SEVEN
    Thursday, May 9
    “O ONA ALDRICH WASN’T IMAGINING a thing,” Cardozo said. “Jim Delancey was working in the kitchen, exactly where she saw him.”
    Sitting in the bird-print chair in a slant of lamplight, Leigh Baker looked pale, tired. “That’s typical,” she said. “Even drunk, Oona had better eyesight than all the rest of us put together.”
    They were talking, just the two of them, in the living room—a soft, generous green-walled space hung with French Impressionists. The town house belonged to Waldo Carnegie, the TV magazine publisher she was living with. Brightness billowed in through gauzy window curtains.
    “When was Jim Delancey released?” she said.
    “Two weeks ago.”
    Her hand kept going to her hair. Her fingers made a combing motion as though she were unconsciously checking the alignment of phantom loose strands. Cardozo found the movement and what it said about her present state of mind curiously touching. It was clearly unconscious, an insecure grooming