A Colder Kind of Death by Gail Bowen Read Free Book Online

if I was the interloper.
    “Hello, Joanne,” Maureen Gault said. Her voice was low and husky. “I just came back from Kevin’s memorial service, and I figured it was only right to bring you and your family a memento of this sad day.”
    She put Ian’s photograph back on the mantel. “Looks like we have even more in common now,” she said.
    Dumbfounded, I stared at her.
    “You know, both of us widows and all,” she added helpfully. Little Mo had control of the scene, and she knew it. “I wish I’d had a portrait done of Kevin, so our son could remember his dad.”
    When I didn’t respond, she shrugged, walked over to my coffee table and picked up her purse. “We couldn’t have a real funeral on account of the cops haven’t released the body. Anyway, Kevin’s mum wants to donate his remains to science for the good of mankind. Lame, eh? But I thought there wasn’t much point in waiting around.” She opened her purse and took out a funeral home program. “This hasthe service on it,” she said, “and there’s a celebration of Kevin’s life. I guess all of us are a mix of bad and good. I thought your kids might want this for historical reasons. Set the record straight.”
    Finally, I came up with a line. It wasn’t much. “Get out,” I said. “Get out of my house.”
    She shook her head sadly. “Loss is supposed to put everybody on common ground, Joanne,” she said. “I thought you would know that by now.”
    She took a compact and a lipstick out of her purse. She opened the lipstick and drew a careful mouth on top of her own thin lips.
    “Cherries in the Snow,” she said. “I love this colour.” Her platinum hair had been arranged in an elaborate crown of curls. One of the curls had come loose, and she slid it back into place before she picked up her coat.
    “I forgive you,” she said, and her smile, sly and knowing, was the smile of the girl who had stood triumphant on the courthouse steps the day Kevin Tarpley’s confession set her free. “My boy’s father would want me to forgive you. He found Jesus at the end. He was saved.”
    “I know,” I said. “He wrote to me.” I felt the rush that comes with meanness. I thought my words would wound her, suggest that she wasn’t the sole custodian of Kevin Tarpley’s last moments on earth. But when Maureen Gault looked at me, she didn’t look wounded. She looked victorious, as if I’d just handed her exactly what she’d come to my house for.
    “What did he say?” she asked lazily.
    “It was a private letter,” I said.
    “Suit yourself, Joanne,” she said. She dropped the memorial service program on the coffee table and started for the door. As she came parallel with me, she reached up and touched the scarf I was wearing. It was my favourite: anantique silk, bright as a parrot. My son-in-law, Greg, had given it to me for my forty-ninth birthday.
    “I like this,” she said, fingering the silk. “It just kills me how women like you always know how to wear these things. What do you do? Go to scarf school?”
    She laughed at her joke and walked out of the room. I heard the front door close. She was gone, but the scent of her perfume lingered: musky and sweet. I didn’t like the smell any better than I had liked it that morning in my office.
    I grabbed the program from the coffee table and headed towards the back door. Out on the deck, the air was fresh and cold. I tore the program celebrating Kevin Tarpley’s life into a dozen pieces and dropped them in the garbage. As I went back into the house, the jack-o’-lantern smirked at me from the picnic table.

CHAPTER
4
    When I checked the back yard the night of Howard Dowhanuik’s dinner, the pumpkin’s smirk had sagged into a leer. I thought about my daughter. She was a resolute child. In the summer one of her friends had found a kitten; every day since, Taylor had asked if she could have a cat. And now we had the pumpkin. I looked at him, plumped on the picnic table, King of the Back