Jilling (Kit Tolliver #6) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) (9 page)

Now what? Back to Rita’s house?

For pizza and French wine and another session in the living room? This one, she knew, would go further than the last. Their hands wouldn’t be limited to their own flesh, and she could see how the evening might well end with one or both of them getting eaten out.

It wasn’t really a lesbian experience, Kimmie, because we’re not lesbians.

What would it be like, having another woman do that?

Or doing it herself?

She was getting hot thinking about it. But it wasn’t going to happen, and she was going to make sure it didn’t happen by skipping the pizza, skipping the wine, and skipping Rita’s house altogether. If she went there, what could possibly happen afterward? Either she’d want to stay with Rita and try to make some kind of a life together, or she’d feel the need to kill her before moving on. She didn’t want to kill the Rita, not now, not in the least, and she couldn’t stay with her in a town where she’d just murdered a man. She wanted at a minimum to be on the other side of a state line, and ideally clear across the country.

And she’d looked ahead enough to tuck what she could into her handbag. Not all she’d have liked to take, the bag was really no more than an overgrown purse, but enough to hold her until she had a chance to buy something new.

More to the point, nothing she’d left in Rita’s spare bedroom could be traced back to her. Sooner or later she’d call Rita, and by then she’d have a story ready to explain her abrupt departure. But for now all she could do was disappear.

A pity she couldn’t return the bike. Park it someplace, tell Rita where to find it? No, keep it simple.

She left it unlocked a block from the bus station, propped it against a lamp post and walked away from it. Someone was sure to adopt it—before her bus left, and before anyone could begin to wonder who stuck a knife into Graham Weider.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

L
AWRENCE
B
LOCK
published his first novel in 1958. He has been designated a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and has received Lifetime Achievement awards from the Crime Writers’ Association (UK), the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. He has won the Nero, Philip Marlowe, Societe 813, and Anthony awards, and is a multiple recipient of the Edgar, the Shamus, and the Japanese Maltese Falcon awards. He and his wife, Lynne, are devout New Yorkers and relentless world travelers.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Jilling

About the Author