Buried Strangers by Leighton Gage Read Free Book Online Page B

place.”

Chapter Seven
    THEY’D BEEN SHOPPING FOR a cupboard. Actually, Clarice was doing the shopping, and Ernesto was tagging along to make sure she didn’t go overboard on the price. It was late Saturday afternoon, just before six o’clock, three weeks to the day after the Lisboa family’s departure.
    Ernesto was weary and footsore. He wanted to go home, take off his shoes, loosen his belt, and pour himself a tall glass of beer, all of which was exactly as Clarice had planned it. Armarios, priced like the one he’d found “far too expen-sive” that morning at ten, he’d deemed “reasonable” by two and a “pretty good deal” by five thirty. All she had to do was to keep him on his feet for another half hour or so, and he’d be ripe for the picking.
    “How about this one?” he said, giving the price tag on a squat, triangular cupboard only a cursory glance.
    She shook her head.
    “No,” she said. “I want a taller one, like—”
    “Like the one Augusta has,” he sighed. “Yeah, you told me.”
    Ernesto sat down on a cane chair with a torn seat, took off his shoes, and started to massage his feet. Clarice, as if hers weren’t hurting at all, moved forward into the gloom.
    The secondhand furniture shop had, at one time, been three adjoining houses. An enterprising merchant had pur-chased them, knocked holes in the intervening walls, and created one huge space piled high with tables, chairs, bed frames, cupboards, and cabinets. There were only a few sales people. The entire area was dimly lit.
    Clarice stopped in front of a dining table.
    It couldn’t be.
    She bent over to examine the surface. In the near dark-ness, she could just make out the cigarette burn; the one Augusta tried to remove with steel wool and shoe polish. She looked for the ring-shaped stain that Mari had made with a can of Guaraná. And found it. The chairs were there, too, even the one with the broken back. She was about to call Ernesto when she spotted the cupboard. She walked around a sofa with stained upholstery, moved a small table out of the way, and examined it more closely.
    Ernesto got up and came over to join her. “There you go,” he said, tapping the front door, “An armario just like Augusta’s.”
    The relief on his face would normally have pleased her, but not this time. A worried frown crinkled her forehead.
    Ernesto fingered the price tag tied to one of the knobs. “Not a bad price, either. Let me see if I can talk the guy down a little.”
    Footsore or not, Ernesto Portella was a tough man to sep-arate from his money. He was about to go in search of the shop owner when she put a hand on his arm.
    “Ernesto,” she said, “Augusta’s cupboard had a hole on the inside.”
    “Clarice, why are you always—?”
    She tightened her grip on his arm. “Pay attention. She used to keep her rice in plastic sacks.”
    “Plastic sacks?” He scoffed. “How dumb can you get? Everybody knows rats—”
    “—can chew through plastic. And chew through wood. And one did, right through the back of her cabinet.”
    “And you think . . . ?”
    She took her hand off his arm, opened the door, and pointed.
    “Right there,” she said.
    The hole was almost seven centimeters in diameter.
    It must have been a huge rat.
    “WE LOOKED through the rest of the shop,” Clarice told Tanaka, suddenly more garrulous than she’d been at any time during the interview. “Her bedside tables were there, too.”
    “Sure of that, are you?”
    Clarice bobbed her head. “I remember the day she bought them. I helped her carry them home. Believe me, Delegado; something terrible must have happened. Augusta wouldn’t have sold those things. I’m her friend, and I know. I asked her about the cupboard . I wanted to buy it myself, but she said she’d never sell it. It was her mother’s.”
    Tanaka let her run out of steam, and then he stood up. “I’m going to that shop,” he said, “and I want both of you to come with me.”
    “ Merda,