Bone by Bone by Carol O'Connell Read Free Book Online Page A

truck. She focused on Monty’s face. The pasty white blot in her lenses was capped with a thatch of black that might have been made of fur or feathers. “He still has the same bad toupee. He should give it a name and buy it a flea collar.”
    Monty was holding court with the crowd of reporters, and a war of egos was predictable. Her famous father would not enjoy sharing the spotlight with another celebrity.
     
 
The Sheriff Only listened for a few seconds and then said, “Thanks, Addison,” and slammed the telephone receiver down on its cradle. “One more thing, Oren. Stay the hell away from Ferris Monty.”
    “Who is he?”
    “He’s famous,” said the sheriff, as if this might help. It did not. “Well, maybe he only shows up on TV in California. Ferris’s trade is gossip. If you see a chubby little jerk, white as bug larvae, that’ll be him. You might remember his yellow Rolls-Royce.”
    Oren nodded. He never forgot a classic car. “It belonged to one of the summer people.”
    “And now he lives in Coventry year-round.” Cable Babitt gathered up his file holders—all but one—and locked them away in his credenza. Then he picked up his car keys and sunglasses. “I’ll be gone for a while.”
    When the door had closed on the sheriff, Oren glanced at the remaining folder that had been overlooked. It would be rude not to open it—since the sheriff had gone to some trouble, all but decorating this file with a neon arrow and then providing time and privacy to read it.
    The name on the first page was not familiar, though, according to the sheriff’s notes, this man had been a citizen of Coventry for years before Josh had vanished. William Swahn was identified as a former police officer from Los Angeles, wounded in the line of duty after barely one year on the job. Disabled, he had been pensioned off at the tender age of twenty-one. Today this ex-cop would be in his late forties.
    Penned in the margins were the sheriff’s updates, noting that the man was not licensed as a private investigator, though Swahn had conducted many interviews around town, all of them related to Josh’s disappearance. Handwritten words at the top of one page described him as uncooperative, refusing to divulge the name of his client. A margin note listed the most likely client as Oren’s father. This would make sense from Sheriff Babitt’s point of view. The relatives of crime victims commonly hired private police when a case went cold.
    Oren recognized the address on Paulson Lane, a house so well buried in the woods that lifelong residents of Coventry might be unaware of it. That property was well beyond the means of an ex-cop on a disability pension.
    Was Swahn bleeding his client dry to make the mortgage payments?
    No one looked up as Oren passed by the desks in the outer room. Apparently the deputies and civilian staff had been told not to interfere with him. Once outside the building, he stepped into the street to flag down a ride. A woman stopped. Whenever he had occasion to hitchhike, it was always a woman who stopped for him.
     
 
Ferris Monty led his flock of reporters through the town on foot. As a favor to Addison Winston, he had taken on the job of keeping his fellow jackals away from Judge Hobbs.
    He was more than happy to do whatever Addison asked of him. For the first time in twenty-five years, he had hopes of receiving an invitation to Sarah Winston’s birthday ball. It was a gala event that cost the moon and made the society pages, a night when the famous and the infamous danced with the local folk until dawn. Ferris Monty had the distinction of being the only Coventry resident ever to be dis invited. Each year, he received a formal card that bore the printed script of his un invitation, and it was always bordered in black like a funeral announcement.
    The reporters gathered around him on the sidewalk, and he preened for the handheld cameras. “The dead boy’s photographs can be seen in a number of places