Avenging Angel (32 page)
Authors: Rex Burns
“And you never had to do that to anyone?”
“No! Annette said she could take care of anything like that.” His eyes turned back to the picture of the girl standing with arms upraised and smile frozen. “She told me never to worry about anything like that, and I didn’t.”
Wager said carefully, “The medical evidence shows she was not sexually attacked before she was shot.”
“She wasn’t?”
“No. It looked that way. But she wasn’t.”
Sheldon leaned on the bench as if his stomach hurt. “I’m glad for that. I’m glad she didn’t have to go through that.”
“Yes. About how much money did Annette bring home each week, Mr. Sheldon?”
He came back from wherever his thoughts had taken him. “How much? Oh—sometimes two thousand dollars a week. Any week she didn’t make fifteen hundred was a poor week for her. I told you, she was real popular. There was a bunch of Arabs used to come in sometimes and see how high they could stack twenty-dollar bills before she finished a dance.”
“What did you and your wife do with all that money?”
“Do with it?”
“Did you spend it? Save it? Invest it in something?”
“Well, ah, we spent a lot—the condo, that’s expensive. And the cars. Video stuff—working nights, you miss the good programs. Vacations—a little gambling in Vegas.” He looked around the cinder-block walls of the machine shop. “And a lot of it went into this business. This whole set of tools and machines … all new. …” He shook his head, “Like I said, Annette kept the books and I just haven’t had the heart to go over them yet.”
“Did you lend money to anyone who might not want to pay it back?”
“No,” he said definitely. “We never lent money. We saved some and we spent some. That’s it.” His voice rose. “And I don’t see what any of that’s got to do with some son of a bitch killing her. Why don’t you just go out and find what crazy son of a bitch followed her out of the club and killed her! Why don’t you do that instead of coming around here and bugging me with all these questions that don’t mean shit! Go on—go on and find out who it was, and leave me alone!”
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1983 by Rex Raoul Stephen Sehler Burns
cover design by Michel Vrana
978-1-4532-4792-1
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA
