Free Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle by Rob Cornell Page B

strode back to the graves and stared down at them without seeing them. I listened until I heard Sheila’s footsteps recede behind me. Then I could focus on the ground that held my mother and father.
    “Just when I’m about to forgive you two.” Tears burned in my eyes. I blinked and let them fall. “How could you do this to me?”
    The sound of the traffic over the hill died for an instant. Near perfect silence stood in its wake. The top of my scalp was damp from melted snow, my face wet from tears. Neither had anything to do with my sense of drowning.
    “This is the last time I’m coming here,” I said to my parents. “The last time for a long while.”

Chapter 10
    I had just started helping Paul set up the bar to open for business when my cell rang. A sick wave rolled through my stomach even though my ring tone—the opening bars of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”—sounded nothing like the digital twitter of my (recently deceased) office phone. I could never imagine living in a monastery. I wasn’t a very religious person. But the prospect of cutting myself off from phones of any kind made the idea tempting all the same.
    I unclipped the phone from my belt and reluctantly answered it.
    “Hey, Rid. Eddie. Just checking in on the case.”
    Oh, yeah. That. “Sorry, man. I got caught up with another thing today.”
    “That’s okay. I know I’m not the only case you’re working on.”
    No reason to burst his bubble on that score. Though I supposed what Hersch had pulled me into was shaping up to look like a case. Another one without a check coming my way. Good thing I didn’t do this for a living.
    “Promise I’ll put in some good time on it tomorrow,” I said.
    “You think that list I gave you will help?”
    His enemy list. Turned out mild-mannered Eddie Arndt had crunched on a few toes in his time. A half-dozen names graced the list of people Eddie thought might want to get at him for one reason or another. His family’s murder predated four of them, but following up on all possible leads was the name of the detective’s game. I could probably wipe out those four names with a few phone calls on each. Then I could get to the other two. Names I remembered from high school. One of them a detention friend—the kind of kid you associate with only during detention because you both ended up there often enough. Wayne Greenberger. Man, that kid loved detention. To him it was like winning recess back from elementary school.
    “I think it’s a start,” I said. I tried to keep an open mind, even though I didn’t think the list would amount to much. High school squabbles usually weren’t severe enough to warrant a lifetime of stalking and killing your adversary’s relatives. “I’ll let you know if I learn anything.”
    “Right, sorry. Didn’t mean to bug you.”
    “Trust the process, Eddie. It may take a while before we find out what’s underneath this corner we’ve peeled up.”
    “The corners. I liked that analogy.”
    “Talk to you later.” I hung up and clipped my iPhone back to my belt. When I looked around me to see what else needed doing before we opened, I discovered Paul had finished it all while I was on the phone.
    He cocked his mouth in his signature sneer-smile. “Please, your Highness. Don’t dirty your hands with the peasant work.”
    “You want a raise, Paul?”
    The smile turned genuine along with the surprise in his eyes. “Sure.”
    “Then stop being such a smartass and I’ll consider it.”
    He puckered his lips and shook a fist at me. “One of these days, Alice. Bang zoom.”
    I smirked. Only Paul could out smart mouth this smart mouth detective. With all the shit smeared through my life, old Pauly was a good guy to keep around.

    Sunday nights were hit and miss at the High Note . Sometimes you got a crowd desperate to string out the weekend for as long as the drinks kept pouring. Sometimes everyone stayed home, steeling themselves for the coming workweek,