Chad backed off.“Listen to your kiss-ass cousin, Morgaine. She knows how to respect her elders.”
“You’re not my elder. I’m thirty and you’re frozen somewhere in your twenties—going on twelve.” Morgaine crossed her arms. “Besides, elders are wise and you’re just a wiseass. I can’t help you. I don’t know anything more than you know already.”
“Go talk to baseball-boy. Ask him if he hired that private dick. I want to know what’s happening on my case.”
“Fuckin’ A… Okay, I’ll ask.”
“Are you sure you want to do this, Merry?”
Roz put her hand on Merry’s shoulder, slowing her determined march toward the paparazzo’s apartment in Dorchester.
“I have to. First of all, what she did was just plain mean, and second, I want to know where she came up with my birth name.”
Roz shrugged. “I’ll admit it’s a hell of a coincidence. Did you tell Jason what you’re planning to do?”
“No, he has enough to think about.”
“He might have even more to think about if he knew you were in this neighborhood. I don’t have a good feeling about this place.”
Merry glanced around her. The street was lined with three-story tenements in various stages of disrepair. Chain-link fences surrounded most of the yards. Graffiti decorated the boarded-up, broken windows on one house that seemed to be abandoned. When Merry saw a small face in an upstairs window peering down at her, she shivered.What a place to raise children.
“Look, I was attacked in one of the nicest areas of the city. It can happen anywhere.”
Roz glanced all around. “I almost feel sorry for the woman, living in a place like this.”
Merry glared at her best friend. “You didn’t say what I thought you just said. Did you?”
“No. You misheard me. I said, the woman’s a bitch.”
“Good. Now, harden your heart or something. We’re coming up to her house.”
Merry glanced at the paper on which Roz had scrawled the woman’s address. A dilapidated grayish blue house with grayish white trim stood behind the obligatory chain-link fence. A gate ran across it and was padlocked. “Damnation! We came all this way, and we can’t even get to the front door? Isn’t that illegal?”
Roz shrugged. “It might be against some fire code orsomething. Maybe she gets her mail at a post office box and never has visitors.”
Merry faced the gate with her hands on her hips. “Well, she’s getting visitors today.”
“What are you thinking? You’re not going to climb over that fence, are you?”
“No. The gate. It’s smoother on top.”
“Holy crap, Merry. Are you nuts? What if she shoots you for trespassing?”
“I’m not going home without talking to her.” Merry fitted her boot between the grates and boosted herself as high as she could by straightening her arms and locking them. Then she swung one leg over. Now straddling the fence, she paused.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you stopping?”
“I’m stuck.”
“You’re what?”
Roz examined Merry’s clothing. “I don’t see anything caught on the fence.”
“It’s not that. Either I’m going to break a wrist or perform a female castration on myself.”
