Читать книгу Guilty or Not - Alice Zogg - Страница 13

Antoinette LeJeune, known to her friends as Andi, had been content with her life before Bo stepped into it. She was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, where Daddy owned a small bar in the French Quarter. Momma died giving birth to her, so Daddy brought her up on his own. Her childhood had been happy, with Daddy teaching her how to play the fiddle, dance the Cajun Waltz, fish, ride the Harley, load, shoot, and take care of a gun. He had also instructed her in cooking Cajun meals, such as gumbo and jambalaya.

A mere high school senior when Daddy died of liver disease, Andi waited until after graduation before selling his bar and estate, and then rode west to California on her Harley-Davidson. There had also been life insurance and some savings, and Daddy had regularly paid into her college fund. Her inheritance and occasional sleuthing jobs she helped R. A. Huber with enabled Andi to stay afloat.

At the moment, she sat in a lecture hall at UCLA, trying to pay attention to a psychology lecture. Clad in her typical outfit of jeans, black leather jacket, and cowboy boots, she straightened up, tossed her wavy, auburn hair over her shoulders, and focused mischievous green eyes on the lecturer. It was no use. As the professor introduced the class to the theories of Sigmund Freud, her mind wandered and she thought back to that first encounter with Mrs. Huber.

She had been in the Pasadena neighborhood and saw the shingle, R. A. Huber, Private Detective, in front of an office. On a whim, she had gone inside and asked Mrs. Huber for work which had led to her first job at Optimum House a few months later. That was four years ago when she’d been a kid of 18. Meanwhile, she had earned her associate degree of art from Pasadena City College and now worked toward her bachelor ’s at UCLA. In those four years, Mrs. Huber had taught her a lot about the sleuthing business; she felt proud and tickled pink to be part of it.

One of her boss’s favorite pieces of advice popped into her mind: “It is important to keep body and mind agile in our line of work.” Mrs. Huber sure practiced what she preached by working out in the gym on a regular basis and stimulating her brain with Chess, Go, Sudoku, and the like. Andi was aware that each additional job her boss included her in brought new life experiences. It also exposed her to unforeseen dangers, which accounted for a good part of her attraction to the job. The young woman not only admired and held Huber as her mentor but had grown fond of her.

The professor ’s long-winded words briefly reached her ears “… values and evolutionary basis of unconscious processing …” before she returned to her musing. Yes, life had been good before Bo, but now it has turned out even better! He amounted to everything she valued in a man; he was smart, courageous, strong, humorous, caring, and a Southerner riding a Harley to boot. That he also was tall with rugged good looks, sandy hair, and penetrating gray eyes was the icing on the cake. Andi believed that for the first time in her life she had found true love.

They had so much fun getting to know each other while riding their bikes on back roads, playing Frisbee golf, going to the movies, or just talking. Tonight, Bo would take her out to The Alligator, a Cajun restaurant that provided live music and dance on Friday nights.

Laughter erupted among students around her. She was clueless of what had triggered the outburst. The professor must have made a joke, she deduced. Holy Krewe! His lecture is nearly over, she thought. About time I start listenin’ or I’ll flunk the course.