Paging the Dead by Brynn Bonner Page B

right,” I said. “Sometimes people are like porcupines. The more they try to get close, the more they hurt one another.”
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    I still had a half hour so I stopped by The Morningside Apothecary, which most of the locals still call Stanton’s Drugs. I slowed my pace to admire the front window displayof antique apothecary bottles, old measuring implements and vintage medicine boxes and tins. Uber quaint, though I knew once I got past the register I’d find the store stocked with the same assortment of health and beauty items as any chain, plus aisles full of things a person might not know he needed until they beckoned from the shelf. Chia Pets, battery-operated spaghetti twirler forks, T-shirts and all manner of plastic toys with a half-life of about three minutes once they’d been wrestled from the blister packaging.
    I nodded hello to Mr. Stanton, who was tidying the magazine rack. He’d given over the pharmacy operation to his son about a year ago and now spent his days puttering around the store, slipping out to play golf whenever the urge struck him.
    I followed the familiar path to where I knew I’d find my contact lens solution. One of the perks of small town shopping is that even blindfolded I could locate every item I needed from this store.
    As I filled my basket I overheard two teenaged boys at the other end of the aisle. “I betcha it was the husband. It’s always the husband.”
    â€œI thought the old woman was divorced. Wasn’t she that rich old lady who married a grease monkey?”
    â€œHe’s not a grease monkey, dude. He, like, owns a whole string of gas stations. And my mom says they weren’t divorced yet, just heading for it. Maybe he offed her before she could divorce him to get all her money.”
    â€œOr maybe you watch too many cop shows, nimrod. My dad says it was probably a robbery gone bad. He says there’s no telling what kind of stuff she had stashed up there in that big old house.”
    â€œMy mom is freakin’ out, man! She’s all like, Lock the doors! Lock the doors! Like we got anything anybody’d wanna steal. And anyway, she heard it’s got something to do with these two women, like private eyes or something the old lady hired to dig up dirt on somebody.”
    â€œThat’s kinda hot.”
    â€œYou’re sick, man.”
    â€œNot the murder, I mean women private eyes. Like Charlie’s Angels, right?”
    They started making some kind of teenage boy rutting noises. One of them punched the other on the arm and they guffawed some more. I had a fleeting fantasy about borrowing one of the hair dryers from a rack and blowing my hair back as I walked toward them in slow motion. Here you are, boys, here’s your Charlie’s Angel. But first off, with my short legs it would have taken me forever to get to their end of the aisle. And secondly, it was freaking me out that this bizarre rumor about Esme and me was spreading. To top it off, when I checked out I could have sworn I was getting the stink eye from the girl working the register, but it could have been my imagination.
    As I pulled out on River Road and headed for Joe’s service station I was filled with dread. I did some mental bookkeeping and saw lots of mac ’n’ cheese dinners in our immediate future. It didn’t seem fair. We’d already put in so much work on this project. I wondered if I could at least negotiate a kill fee.
    â€œNote to self,” I muttered. “Don’t call it that when you make the pitch.”
    I knew Joe Porter, but only remotely. My father, who hadbeen particular about our vehicles, had always taken them to Porter’s place for service. So I knew my dad must have trusted the man. On the other hand, Dorothy hadn’t had much good to say about Joe. She’d made it clear she felt she’d married well beneath her station. Once she referred