CHAPTER TEN

Elvis had gone on to another song, one Allison didn't know. Bob frowned and sat up, taking his feet off the milk crates. "Allie-girl, Allie-girl, what do you need a gun for? Has someone been bothering you?"

"It's nothing like that –"

"Some crazy guy, you just let me know and we can have that taken care of. This is a good neighborhood. We look out for ourselves and we look out for each other. Do you think I would have encouraged you to move here if I thought it was a bad place?"

"No, I –"

"So if you're not feeling safe, we have to fix that, but I'd hate to see you carrying a gun. We'll get you some of that pepper-spray stuff, sign you up for some self-defense courses. I should have thought of it sooner, a pretty young girl like you and all the times you spend out roaming, you should have something like that, just in case. But there's no sense in getting you in trouble with the law, either."

"I'm not!" Allison said, blushing hotly.

"Why do you need a gun?"

"I don't need a gun."

Bob rubbed his pate, disturbing his comb-over. "What are we talking about, then?"

"Never mind."

"Never mind? I think not. If someone’s been bugging you, following you, some stranger or boyfriend who won't take 'dumped' for an answer, I need to hear about it."

"I can take care of myself, Uncle Bob, really. Nobody's bugging me. And, sheesh, the way you're talking it sounds like you'd hire someone to –"

Her thoughts broke off with a snap, or maybe it was the decisive snap of a last puzzle piece fitting into perfect place.

"Allie?"

"Oh, whoa, hey," she murmured.

Uncle Bob, his disorderly office and his Elvis music faded out. She was thinking of the blonde in the forest green business outfit. She looked like the least likely hired killer anybody could imagine.

And yet … a gun, twenty-five thousand in cash, and that folder …

She wished she had taken a better look at the folder and its contents. Wished she had listened more closely to the tape.

"Allison, are you okay, hon?"

It was nuts. Wasn't it?

Of course it was. She had been listening to Uncle Bob talk about how in this neighborhood, they looked out for each other. How, if some creep was stalking her, she should tell him and he'd have it taken care of. Like Needles took care of the flasher that had shown his version of bratwurst to Gretchen Oberdorfer … took care of him to the tune of two broken arms and worse.

All of that floating around in her head, was it any wonder she'd come to such a conclusion about the blonde with the buttercream-leather shoulder bag? When, really, there was probably another explanation, a perfectly logical and perfectly innocent one, for the things that had been in her purse.

She shook herself. "Sorry, Uncle Bob. I got thinking about something else."

He leaned closer, his blue eyes not so much twinkling now as penetrating. "I can tell something's up, Allie-girl, something's on your mind. I promised your mother that I'd keep an eye on you, remember. While I've broken more than a few promises to my baby sister, this is one I'd like to keep."

"I'm fine," she said. "No creeps, no stalkers, no psycho ex-boyfriends. I haven't even dated anybody long enough to qualify as a boyfriend, let alone an ex. What have you been telling Mom about me, anyway?"

Four years ago, at the age of eighteen, Allison had announced to her stunned family that she didn't want to go to college. That, in fact, she wanted to move out on her own, get a job, and be independent. It had not been a speech that received rave reviews from the Montgomerys. They couldn't believe that anyone, least of all one of their own children, could reject their wealth, their influence, their luxurious country-club and high-society lifestyle.

Her father waxed wroth, saying that if she wanted to do such a foolish and irresponsible thing, she'd have to do it without any help from him. The money meant for college would be put away in a trust fund and she would have no access to it until she came to her senses. The car, the cherry-red birthday Corvette, would be taken away. So would the allowance, which by then had gone up to a hundred a week. He had hoped that he could scare her into complying, but all his threats had done was to make Allison more belligerent and determined.

Her mother had been crushingly disappointed. Hilary was too caught up in her ballet career to even think of marrying yet, and Susan's mother got to have all the fun and bask in the glory when Susan and Daniel Jr. married. Marian had been banking on Allison to go to college long enough to find a husband, thereby letting her plan the idyllic storybook society wedding. The fact that Allison had no interest in prospective bridegrooms mattered not one bit in these maternal dreams, which were so brutally trampled underfoot by Allison's uncaring, callous, selfish desire to lead her own life.

Finally, seeing that they could not dissuade her, and perhaps coming to an unwilling understanding that she really did not care about the money, the connections, and the privilege, her parents had consented to let her move out. They might even have been glad of it, since clearly, whatever her DNA, she was no true daughter of theirs in spirit.

But they had imposed one condition. A condition that her father perhaps thought of as a dismal fate guaranteed to bring Allison groveling home again. They wanted her to go to work for Uncle Bob at his thrift store. Surely this humiliation would get through to her, would teach her a lesson.

Wrong.

She'd loved the thrift store from the moment she had first set foot inside. It had been like a larger version of the purses, an entire building full of oddball items. Mostly trash, occasionally treasure.

Dealing with the donations, or with the customers, offered Allison the same secret peek into the lives of strangers that she got when rifling through the contents of a stolen purse. Everything, and everyone, had a story to tell.

There was the one woman who had undergone weight-loss surgery and came in every month to drop off the clothes she could no longer fit into, while buying smaller ones. She had told Allison, laughing and shamefaced at the same time, that once she reached her goal, she would go on a huge spending spree at the ritzy downtown department stores and blow a fortune outfitting her sleek new body, but until then she would get by on second-hand.

And there was the guy who came in every week without fail, looking for board games, which Allison suspected he sold on the Internet for a tidy profit. She had once seen him almost capering with glee when he found a set of old Lawn Darts, the kind that had been discontinued because of their deadly metal tips but which apparently sold for big bucks. Jamie said that the same guy made regular stops at the Readmore, looking for role-playing games.

"I haven't been telling her anything," Uncle Bob said, in response to Allison's question about her mother. "Only that you're fine and well, you're not starving, you're not sleeping in a cardboard box."

"As far as they're concerned, I might as well be," she said. "They'd croak if they ever saw my place."

"Well, it is a little run down," he said. "You're always welcome to the rooms above the garage, if you want."

Uncle Bob lived on Pine Street, in a long skinny house that looked tiny from the front and like a railroad car from the inside. He had a detached garage in the back, with a two-room apartment over it. At the moment, the utilities in the apartment weren't hooked up and he used it to store all the spare furnishings and possessions he'd moved out of his house to make room for his ever-growing collection of records and music memorabilia.

"I like my place," Allison said. "Besides, I'm supposed to be independent, aren't I? How could I be independent living over your garage?"

The phone hidden somewhere in the papers on the desk let out a braying buzz. Bob excavated it. "Yes?"

As he talked – to Virginia, by the sound of it – Allison let her thoughts go back to the blonde, the gun and the money. What if the blonde was a hired killer? A hit man, or hit woman if you like. Maybe things like that did happen in the real world, and not just on the cop shows.

If it was true, how pissed must she be?

How pissed, and how alarmed and scared?

Another chilly glissando ran down Allison's spine, just like the one she'd gotten when she had first seen the gun.

Pretty damn pissed. Pretty damn alarmed. Pretty damn scared.

Suppose that the blonde had just … what did they call it? Had just been offered a contract on someone's life.

Whose life?

The guy in the pictures. The muscular guy on the sailboat.

Again, the chill, spreading out through her body. She had only glanced at the photos, but had seen enough to know that the man in them had been handsome, smiling, cheerful.

So, suppose that he was the target. Suppose the blonde had been given the information, the weapon – wouldn't she have her own weapon? Allison didn't know – and the cash. The payment. Some sort of contingency. Half now, the rest on completion? That'd be fifty thousand dollars.

Fifty thousand dollars to kill someone. To take a human life.

Was that enough?

People did some pretty gross and unbelievable things for that kind of money, if reality TV shows were to be trusted. People ate live spiders and immersed themselves in tubs full of rancid animal parts for that kind of money. People lied, betrayed, and cheated.

Would they kill?

Probably.

The blonde, then. Assume the blonde is the kind of person who would accept money to shoot a guy, to murder him. She gets her preliminary payment, her gun, all the details … and then …

"And then someone steals her purse," whispered Allison, feeling pale and cold all over. "Some skateboarder knocks her down and makes off with her purse. What's she going to do? What does she have to do?"

Uncle Bob was still talking, explaining to Virginia with the aggrieved air of someone repeating himself for the umpteenth time that, no, they didn't buy used items. No, not even for store credit. It was all donations.

"She has to get her stuff back," Allison said, still whispering. "She has to find the purse-snatcher. And … and make sure nobody else knows. Ever."

"Tell him to hang on, I'll be right down," Uncle Bob finally said, in a grumpy tone. He got up and turned off Elvis. "Time to get to work, Allie-girl."

"Okay," she said, barely aware of what she was saying.

It was a strange feeling, realizing that someone wanted to kill you.

**