Free Death Under Glass by Jennifer McAndrews Page A

bottom of an empty glass. “What do I care what’s in the box?”
    Now Diana raised her brows. A shift in her stance and a squaring of her shoulders was all it took for her to complete the transformation into cop mode. She held up a hand, palm out, in my direction. “Stay back,” she said.
    â€œSeriously?”
    Diana glowered, and I folded my arms and waited.
    As Carrie appeared in the doorway leading from kitchen to living room, Diana popped open the box with the toe of her canvas sneaker. The speed of the motion and the pop of the box top startled me into flinching.
    Recovering myself, I leaned forward and peered into the box.
    Diana sat on the edge of Carrie’s chair, and Carrie stood watching over her shoulder. With deft fingers, Diana flipped past framed photographs and knitting magazines until she reached a series of photo albums standing on their ends. “This does look like junk,” she said.
    â€œThere’s a bag, too, but that’s all old dry cleaning receipts and old bridge scores or something,” Carrie said. She grimaced and handed Diana a glass of ice water. “I accidentally dropped the bag and it spilled all over the kitchen.”
    â€œYou don’t think this has anything to do with the fire, do you?” I directed the question to Diana.
    â€œDon’t know.” Reaching into the box, she withdrew a pair of photo albums and handed them up to me. “Take a look through these.”
    â€œI’ll get the bag,” Carrie said.
    With Diana perched on the chair Carrie had vacated and Carrie curled in the chair I had moved away from, I settled on the horsehair couch with the photo albums across my lap. Covers of worn leather felt like they might crumble beneath my fingers, the paper pages like they might disintegrate at my touch. Carefully, I turned to the first page. Black paper photo corners held the pictures in place and gave stark contrast to the faded shades of gray in the images. I peered closely at the first picture, squinting to make out the figures in their rigid poses. A stiff-looking couple, he standing, she sitting. In the woman’s lap, acres and acres of lace presumably wrapped a baby.
    The same couple appeared in nearly all the photos, the number of children pictured with them increasing, the black-and-white images giving way to bleached color. Outdoors, indoors, picnics and Christmases, a family chronology captured in images. Now and again there were clusters of women gathered around card tables, grinning beneath identical hairstyles. And here and there, groups of men stood smiling next to pallets of red brick. These were the good old days of Wenwood.
    â€œYou know, if I knew how to knit, this would be a really great hat for winter.” Diana held out an open magazine for Carrie and me to see.
    â€œYou don’t know how to knit?” Carrie’s voice cracked with disbelief.
    Diana leveled a look at Carrie that would reduce a less cheerful soul to dust. “Do you know how to field strip a nine-millimeter Sig?”
    â€œAre we done looking through this stuff?” I asked loudly. “Isn’t it time to head over to town hall? Don’t we want to get good seats . . . or something?”
    Diana left off glaring at Carrie and turned to me. “You find anything interesting?” she asked.
    I held up the photo album. “I think this woman only owned two dresses.”
    She huffed and looked to Carrie. “How about you? Did you find anything?”
    â€œNothing.”
    Diana sighed. “Nothing here either.” She stood, brushing dust off her palms. “That’s too bad.”
    â€œ
That’s too bad?
” I echoed.
    She shrugged. “So I was thinking of becoming adetective. Getting a lead on the arsonist who blazed that office might look good in my file. Maybe. And plus I’d get to help you out,” she told Carrie.
    â€œWin-win,” I commented, fighting to keep a