Chasing a Blond Moon by Joseph Heywood Read Free Book Online

credentials.”
    â€œEngineering?”
    â€œZoology,” Adams said, glancing at his watch.
    Service said, “You said no problems book-wise. Were there other kinds of problems?”
    â€œStandard stuff—booze in his dorm room, fake ID—nothing major. The kids here hit the books hard and the competition is tough. Some students play hard to offset the pressure. Is there anything else?”
    â€œNo, sir,” Pyykkonen said. “We appreciate your help.”
    â€œYou need anything else, you be sure to give a shout, eh?”
    â€œYooper?” Pyykkonen asked.
    Adams looked embarrassed as he turned back to face her. “Slips out, ya know? Yah sure, born and raised over to Rock.”
    Pyykkonen’s question didn’t surprise Service. Yoopers had a tendency to try to identify each other, as if place of birth conferred a certain level of verisimilitude.
    When the professor was gone, Pyykkonen and the sheriff exchanged glances. “Not all that broken up,” Pyykkonen said.
    â€œLet’s get on inside,” the chief said.
    The foyer was standard western, with a closet and a high ceiling. From the foyer they moved into a long room with a rough-hewn wood floor.
    Pyykkonen said to nobody in particular, “Should we take off our shoes?”
    â€œNobody to bitch if we don’t,” Chief Macofome said.
    The first room was huge, perhaps twenty by forty feet, with a squat black enameled table in the center. The table was surrounded by embroidered black satin pillows. There was a huge digital TV in one corner. No books, no flowers. The ceiling was covered with jade green colored paper. There was a sliding glass door at the end of the room, looking out on a garden that seemed to be a collection of small twisted trees, plots of raked sand, and boulders of various sizes, shapes, and colors. The base of the walls on both sides of the room was lined with low chests of drawers. Some of the chests had pillows on them.
    â€œNot my idea of cozy,” Service said, the barren interior reminding him vaguely of how he had lived in his own place before he had fallen in love with Maridly Nantz and moved in with her. Nantz had brought a distinctly positive change to his life. What effect his son would have remained up for grabs.
    There was a bedroom that was barren except for a wide low bed with nightstands and bulbous brown lamps on them. The bed was centered on a mat that looked to Service like varnished paper. Behind the bed there was a large, stark painting of a creature that had a lion’s mane and a longish snout, like a combination of a lion and wolf, but it was not so much a wolf as something else, which Service couldn’t place. He studied the painting for a few moments and gave up. As in the main room, there were cumbersome wooden chests along one wall.
    â€œHomey,” Pyykkonen said, wrinkling her nose.
    Service was disturbed by the place. He’d always prided himself on not accumulating stuff when he lived in his cabin on Slippery Creek, but this looked barren and sterile, and he wondered if this was what people had seen when they came to his cabin. It was not a reassuring thought. There was nothing here but bare necessities—no personality, no decorations, no joy—just that peculiar painting.
    The kitchen was small and equipped with all the conveniences, but it was so clean that it looked hardly used. Like the rest of the house it was virtually empty save a package of chocolate-covered figs and an untouched six-pack of OB Lager Beer in the fridge. Service looked at the bottles with the blue labels: Bottled by Oriental Brewery Co. Ltd. Seoul, Korea. “Never seen this brand before,” he said.
    The figs were in separate compartments like chocolates, and three compartments were empty. The fruits were each wrapped in gold foil.
    She said, “Tough to be overweight when there’s no food.”
    â€œMaybe he ate out a lot,” Service said.