A Good Man Gone (Mercy Watts Mysteries) by A.W. Hartoin Read Free Book Online Page A

caddywhompus as usual. I gritted my teeth and considered turning around. I was not in the mood for Morty. He asked too many questions and I had no answers, at least not yet. But there he was, and it wouldn’t do to avoid him, as if that were possible for any length of time. Uncle Morty liked to turn up when I least wanted to see him. He was a total bloodhound and my father’s best friend, if you didn’t count my mother. Plus, he wasn’t my real uncle which made him more annoying than blood family and just as hard to get rid of.
    Uncle Morty waited, in ambush, on the back porch. I was halfway up the garden path when a drizzle started, making the long grass shiny green, and the sky took on a thick purple cast. The wind picked up, swirling the leaves and lawn clippings around my feet. The heavy air and dread slowed me, as I walked the twenty yards toward him.
    Uncle Morty waited, not moving a muscle. He stood at the edge of the stairs, a menacing statue with his arms crossed and his driving cap tipped low on his forehead. Given the rest of his getup, the hat should’ve looked ridiculous. He wore a gray sweat suit washed within an inch of its life, a pair of Nike high-tops circa 1985 and a Members Only jacket that hadn’t fit in ten years. I doubted Morty noticed he was carrying another person around his middle.
    I stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked up at him. Rain dripped off the brim of his hat and he looked at me from behind thick glasses. I couldn’t read his expression. The lenses were fogged from the rain and he made no attempt to wipe them. He stood and waited, and I wished my eyes would stop burning.
    “You coming up or what?” Morty said.
    I grasped the railing and put my right foot on the first step.
    “Get a move on. Shit. I ain’t got all day.”
    I climbed the stairs, pulled out my key and unlocked the back door. I walked into the butler’s pantry with Morty close at my heels and hung my rain-soaked jacket on the coatrack by the door and watched as Morty rummaged through the cabinets. The pantry was wonderful with its floor-to-ceiling cabinets, secret drawers, and odd-shaped cubbies. As a little girl, I spent hours trying to find the pantry’s secrets. I doubt I’d discovered them all. The man who built our house was a master woodworker and I suspected deeply crazy. There were secret drawers and doors all over the house. His masterpiece was the pantry with its beveled glass, hidden hinges, delicate carvings, and unique temperature. The small room was freezing. Josiah Bled designed his house to keep the pantry at a steady forty degrees. It didn’t matter if the doors to the kitchen and dining room were left open; it never warmed. Dad spent hours trying to figure it out. Architects were called. Structural engineers examined it. No one had a clue. Every couple of years, Dad made a fresh attempt to discover the secret, but he couldn’t make any headway.
    I rubbed my shoulders and watched Morty pulling out drawers. Morty liked the pantry too, but only because Dad kept his booze in there. Then he stopped, shut a drawer with a flip of his wrist and looked at the liquor cabinet. The cabinet was original to the house although it was fifty years older. It was tucked in a cubby in a bank of built-ins. It looked like Josiah Bled placed the liquor cabinet in there and the rest grew in around it. It stood four feet high on delicate cabriole legs that looked as if they might snap under its weight. The front had four false drawers inlaid with five different types of wood in a star pattern. The sides were probably inlaid too, but we couldn’t see them. Josiah built around the cabinet with only one millimeter to spare, and it couldn’t be removed. Wooden hands and vines came out from the built-ins and wrapped around the legs. You’d have to snap off the legs or break the woodwork to get it out. Josiah made sure his cabinet would never leave.
    Uncle Morty turned the key in the top drawer, pushed the top up