Wicked Games (Hartley Grace Featherstone Mysteries Book 3), Gemma Halliday [free ebooks romance novels txt] 📗

real name was Ed Something-or-Other. His last name was 20 letters long with no vowels. I'd never been able to pronounce it, and he'd lived across the hall for nearly a year. In that whole time, I'd never seen him wear anything but torn jeans and T-shirts featuring wash-worn photos of different classic rock bands or album covers, from back when there were classic rock bands and album covers. His face was long and thin with a scrubby patch of whiskers on the point of his chin and a Jack Nicholson arch to his eyebrows that only added to the devilish leer.

Suddenly the cabbage smell made sense.

"Hey, Marty." He leaned against the doorway, arms crossed over the Led Zeppelin album cover imprinted on his shirt, head cocked sideways to look me over. "It's about time you got home. Your phone's been ringing for the past couple of hours."

"It has?" A frisson of anxiety shivered through me. Maybe my mother had had an accident of some kind out in her condo in Phoenix. No, that couldn't be it. She'd have called my cell phone. And I'd seen Irene not too long ago. That was pretty much it as far as people willing to put in a couple of hours' effort to reach me.

"Probably telemarketers," I said, mostly to convince myself. I made a mental note to text Mom just in case. "They have a knack for calling at dinnertime."

2B nodded. "That's what I used to do, when I was one."

No surprise there.

He stepped into the hall, pulling his door shut behind him. "I'm jonesing for a Big Mac. Buy you one?"

I couldn't imagine how. As far as I knew, 2B didn't have a job. I suppressed a shudder. "No, thanks. How can you have an appetite with that smell?"

"Smell?" A flicker of confusion crossed his face and cleared. "Oh, you must be talking about the boiled cabbage. Mr. Bitterman's trying out a new recipe."

I should've known. Isaac Bitterman was an 83-year-old widower who'd been forced to discover cooking after his wife died, only he'd gone immediately to the dark side of the culinary arts. His sense of smell seemed as blunted as his eyesight; his experiment with Limburger cheese and broccoli had lingered in the hallway for a week. Unluckily for me, he lived on the other side of a very thin wall, and there were times that the stench of his food was so thick in my apartment that I could practically do a taste test for him.

2B shoved a hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of crumpled bills. All ones, as far as I could see. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd produced a roll of pennies. "So what do you think, Marty?" he asked. "Big Mac?"

I shook my head. "Sorry, I ate at work."

"Your loss. I'm a great dinner date." He scratched his armpit, providing evidence to the contrary. "One of these days, you're gonna let me buy you a burger."

I couldn't possibly live enough days for that. I shoved my bike into the apartment ahead of me. "Sure. Bon appétit."

"Bone appetite to you, too," he told me. "I'll catch you later, Marty." He lifted a casual hand over his shoulder in a wave as he disappeared down the stairs.

Blowing out a breath, just to avoid inhaling more boiled cabbage stench, I followed my bike inside and hung it on the hook beside the door before locking both dead bolts and heading for the kitchen to scrounge up something for dinner. Despite what I'd told 2B, all I'd eaten at work was a coffee cake muffin, and my stomach was growling.

I stood in front of the open fridge, surveying a few bottles of beer, half a loaf of white bread, a two-day-old carton of sweet and sour chicken, and a Tupperware container of leftover takeout linguini. The pasta wasn't a Big Mac, but it would have to do. Hopefully the scent of marinara sauce could overtake the secondhand cabbage. I dumped the linguini onto a plate and shoved it into the microwave.

The phone rang while the timer was counting down.

"Martha Hudson, please." A male voice, deep and confident. Nice. But telemarketers could have nice voices too. That didn't mean I wanted to talk to one.

"Who's calling?" I glanced at the microwave. When had I ordered that linguini? Maybe I should have gone with the Chinese food. There was still time. I opened the fridge.

"My name is Andrew Bonamassa," he said. "I'm an attorney with the firm of Bonamassa and Hadley. Is this Miss Hudson?"

I closed the fridge. The rent. It had to be about the rent. My landlord had finally gotten fed up with chasing me down for his money. It was bound to happen. Now there would probably be interest and court costs and lawyers' fees to pay too. How was I going to manage that?

Briefly, I considered fibbing, but I wasn't very good at it. It was probably best just to get it over with. "I'm Martha Hudson," I said with a sigh. "And I'm very sorry, but things have been kind of tight for a while, and I know that's no excuse, but I really didn't intend to do it. It just sort of happened, and, well, now it's gotten out of control, I'll admit it, but I guess I can go on a payment plan of some sort, right?"

A few seconds of silence. Then: "Could you tell me your mother's maiden name, Miss Hudson?"

"Oh, for pete's sake." I rolled my eyes. "I already told you I'll go on a payment plan. There's no reason to drag my mother into this."

More silence. Then, tentatively: "How about the names of your siblings?"

I stared at the phone. What was with this guy and his intrusive personal questions? Was this how bill collectors worked? Weren't there laws