The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7) - Page 132
“Thank you very much,” Matt said.
“When I went to get my car from the garage? And my mother came to the garage?”
Matt nodded.
“Mommy told you?”
“Mommy said I should be especially nice to you because of your tragic loss,” Susan said. “So I naturally asked, ‘What tragic loss?’ ”
“Okay. So are you going to be nice to me?”
“What happened to her?”
“You don’t know?” Matt asked. “She got some bad shit, stuck it in her vein, and ‘So Long, Penelope Detweiler. ’ ”
“You sounded like a policeman just then.”
“I am a policeman.”
“I mean instead of her fiancé.”
“We never got quite that far,” Matt said. “Close, but not that far.”
“But it hurt, right?”
“It was a tragedy. She had everything going for her—”
“Including you?” Susan interrupted.
“That was a possibility. But she couldn’t leave it alone. The drugs, I mean. Her parents sent her to a place in Nevada, but it didn’t work.”
“How did she get started on it?”
“She started running around with a gangster named Anthony J. DeZego, also known as Tony the Zee. I have no idea how that happened—she was probably looking for a thrill. But I’m sure he’s the bastard that got her hooked.”
“And he’s still around?”
“No, he’s not. The mob, for reasons still unknown, blew him away. That’s why Penny wasn’t Daffy’s maid of honor when she married Chad. Penny was with Tony the Zee when they hit him. Shotgun. When Chad and Daffy were married, Penny was in Hahnemann Hospital, full of number eight shot, wrapped up like a mummy. Mummy with a U; as in Egyptian.”
“My God!”
“You didn’t go to the wedding? It gave everybody something to talk about.”
“I couldn’t get away,” Susan said.
“No, of course you weren’t at the wedding. If you had been, I would have remembered.”
She looked at him uncomfortably.
“This is all new to me.”
“Daffy didn’t tell you?”
“Daffy told me drugs were involved in Penny’s death. I didn’t pry.”
They lapsed into silence. Finally, Susan stood up.
“I really have to go,” she said.
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