Full House: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 3) by Shelley Singer

bottle of beer that he’d left on the table.
    “How many of those have you got?” I asked chattily.
    His head shot up from his contemplation of the bottle. “Hey, I can drink just one of anything.”
    “I didn’t mean to offend you,” I said, somewhat startled. “I was just hinting that maybe there’s one for me.”
    He stared at me for a moment, then laughed quietly, embarrassed, got up, opened the refrigerator door just far enough to slip his hand inside, and took out another bottle for me.
    “Sorry. Pretty rude. See, my old man drank himself to death, and I’m a little touchy. Matter of fact,” he shrugged, “I’m a little touchy in general, okay?”
    “Okay with me,” I told him. “I suppose you’re pretty touchy about Marjorie, too.” I spoke in a near-whisper, following his lead.
    “No.”
    “I thought she was an ex-lover. I thought everybody was touchy about those. The recent ones, anyway.”
    “Depends on the ex, don’t you think? I mean, how it went bad, how it was good.”
    “Then tell me. How do you feel about Marjorie?”
    He didn’t so much as blink. “I love her. She’s great. She never lied to me, never cheated, never fucked me over or fucked me up. She hurt the shit out of me, but that’s how it goes sometimes.”
    “You mean when she left you for Noah?”
    He shook his head. “She didn’t leave me for Noah. She didn’t leave me for anybody. She left me because she didn’t love me in the right way, that’s all. I don’t even know if she and this Noah dude got something going. If it happened, it happened after we broke up, and she never mentioned it to me.”
    I thought about that for a while. I couldn’t get anyone to say they knew that Noah and Marjorie were involved.
    I pushed harder. “You sound a little altruistic. You always so sweet about getting dumped?”
    There was that cynical smile again. “Nothing sweet about me. Marjorie, she’s my friend.” He paused. “You think I might have something to do with Marjorie going away? You think maybe I’d hurt her? I’m going to tell you something, Samson. I went with a girl once, she lied, she cheated, she even tried to steal from me at the end. And then she just walked out on me with this dude she’d been seeing for months and months. . . . I’ll tell you something about that. I wanted them both dead. I wanted to take a gun and shoot her, and shoot him, and watch them bleed. That’s how bad it was. That’s how much hate she left inside of me. But I didn’t do anything. It’s been three years now, and I still wish, sometimes, that I could shoot them both. Dead, like they never lived at all. You ever feel that way? I was a dumb trusting kid and I didn’t know any better, and she poured shit on my head and so did he. But Marjorie? No. Not Marjorie. And I’m going to be more than a little bit upset if I find out someone has hurt her.”
    I didn’t comment on his speech. I decided to change the subject for a while, just to ease things up a little.
    “You alone here?”
    “No. Got a partner. Out in the backyard. That guy starts to come in a window, we got him between us.”
    “How come you left a light on in there”— I nodded toward the bedroom— “and the porch light?”
    “Dark house is too suspicious. He don’t mind somebody being home, and if she was home, she might be watching TV in the bedroom. If she’s out, she’d still leave a light on. Nobody goes away and leaves a dark house. Maybe he even hopes she’ll be here. She’s an old lady.” He looked as though the beer had gone bad in his mouth.
    “Where is she?”
    He smiled. “Some of the neighbors are having a party, so we got half a dozen empty houses tonight.”
    It took some effort to get back to the subject, back to the case I was working on, sitting as I was in the middle of an ambush. I found myself hoping the robber would show up. I was tired of thinking, of talking to people. A shot of adrenaline would be welcome.
    “You say you and