Fiddlers Read Online Free Page B

Andy.�
    �You and Meyer stick with the violin player. And head up the team.�
    �We better hope there ain�t another one,� Parker said.
    �Another violin player?� Genero asked.
    �Another anybody,� Parker said.
    This was truly a pain in the ass.
    * * * *
    Calm�s Point could have been a foreign nation. Took them forty minutes downtown from the Eight-Seven and then over the bridge to the Nine-Eight, where the most recent Glock murder had occurred. Was what they were already calling them: the Glock Murders. In the dead woman�s apartment now, the inheriting detectives felt like they�d just crossed the Euphrates.
    The body had been removed long ago, but its chalked outline was still on the kitchen floor. Frying pan on the stove, cold mushrooms and eggs in it, lady�d been cooking an omelet. Big carving knife on the floor, where she�d dropped it when the killer aced her. Fire-escape window open wide, they assumed this had been the point of entry.
    What troubled them was that this time he - or she -had been invasive. The blind violinist had been shot on the street. This time, the killer had entered the vic�s living space, which meant this wasn�t just a random killing, this was a chosen target. Which could or could not mean that the previous vic had been deliberately selected as well. In which case, the killer had so far picked targets in disparate parts of the city. The blind guy all the way uptown in the Eight-Seven�s turf, and now the omelet lady, here in her own apartment in Calm�s Point.
    No apparent theft this time, either. Lady�s jewelry still in her top dresser drawer, money in her handbag. Credit cards ID�d her as one Alicia Hendricks. Neighbors told them she worked for some cosmetics company in �The City� - which meant back across the river and into the trees again. One of the neighbors thought the name of the firm was Beauty Blush. But a laminated card in her wallet identified her as a sales rep for a firm called Beauty Plus, at 165 Twombley, in midtown Isola, and a phone call confirmed that she was indeed an employee of the company.
    * * * *
    The salesman was telling him that the sticker price on the car was $74,330�
    �Standard features include the four-point-two-liter V-8, two-hundred and ninety-four horsepower engine��
    Baldy kept circling the car like some kind of hawk about to pounce on a rabbit.
    �� six-speed automatic transmission with overdrive, four-wheel antilock brakes
    Guy didn�t look like he could afford seventy-four bucks, no less seventy-four grand�
    �� side-seat-mounted air bags, driver and passenger-side air-bag head extension��
    �What colors does it come in?� Baldy asked.
    �I have the chart right here,� the salesman said. �Your exteriors come in the Topaz, the Ebony, the Midnight, the Radiance, the Seafrost��
    Guy kept circling the car, running the palm of his hand over the fenders, the hood, the sleek sides�
    �For the interiors, you have a choice of the Cashmere, the Dove, the Ivory��
    �When can I take delivery?�
    �Depends on whether you plan to buy or lease��
    �Lease,� Baldy said.
    �� and whether we can find the vehicle in the colors you��
    �Find it,� he said.
    * * * *
    The sales manager of Beauty Plus�s Lustre Nails Care Division was a man named Jamie Dewes. He was surprised to find two detectives from uptown on his doorstep at four P.M. that twenty-first day of June, because he�d already been visited by detectives from Calm�s Point last week.
    �Terrible thing,� he told Parker and Genero. �Why would anyone want to kill Alicia?�
    But in the very next breath, he told the detectives that Alicia thought someone was following her. Veronica Alston, his assistant, confirmed this.
    �Some creepy bald-headed guy,� she said.
    �When did she tell you this?� Genero asked.
    �Last week sometime?� Jamie said.
    �No, before then,� Veronica said. �Around the beginning of the