Death Claims by Joseph Hansen Read Free Book Online

was beautiful and charming. Draw your own conclusions." She bent into the light for her glass and held it out for Norwood. "But Peter and John might have been monozygotic twins. They thought alike, moved alike, spoke alike, looked alike. They cared for the same things. They were — I don't know the words for it — absolutely gone on each other, I suppose you'd say. They're the only two people I've ever known who lived together for twenty years and genuinely enjoyed every minute of it." 
    "And teamed up against you, I'm told," Dave said. 
    She got a new drink from Norwood. When she turned back, her smile was sardonic. "And were twice as weak that way. You see, they not only had each other's virtues, they had each other's flaws. It's what makes your fantasy so absurd. Neither of them would have had the courage to kill anyone." She frowned thoughtfully. "Except, of course, themselves. John was doing that. With morphine. It came out in the medical examiner's report at the inquest. He was an addict." 
    "It was for the pain," Dave said. 
    She shook her head. "The pain was long past. Ask Dr. De Kalb." 
    Norwood came back and sat down. "He could have drowned himself. He was badly scarred and he'd been proud of his looks. Also he had no money, no future." 
    "April didn't mind the scars," Dave said. "She was getting jobs. They were eating. There was a roof over their heads. April was his future." 
    "Peter," Eve Oats said stubbornly. 
    "Not at the end. His wanting to change the policy shows that. Peter had walked out on him. No, I don't know why. But they must have quarreled." 
    "Unthinkable." She held her hand against the light again. Its shadow masked her eyes. "Your eagerness to save your company money is muddling your mind. If Peter killed his father for his insurance, why hasn't he tried to collect it? What's he doing?" 
    "Having the horrors someplace," Dave said. "Murder takes some people that way. Doing it is one thing. Living with it is another. Thanks for the drink." 
    He went out through the dusky shop. 

6
    N IGHT MET HIM in the courtyard. He inched his sleeve back. 6:lO. His mouth tightened. He ought to have phoned earlier. He had to phone now. Was there a booth? It waited in a dark corner like a child left over from a long-ago twilight game of hide-and-seek. It was an old wooden booth with wired glass and overgrown with ivy. When he stepped inside and unfolded the door shut to make the light turn on, tendrils of ivy groped through the hinge crack like roots into a coffin. A man wouldn't talk long here — not if he hoped to leave. He listened to the quarter rattle down. He dialed. 
    " Alló ." It had rung only once. That was bad. Behind the voice the stereo came through. Edith Piaf, Juliette Greco, Yves Montand? He couldn't make out. It didn't matter. He felt bad about them all. As he felt bad about the copies of Paris-Match that strewed the living room, as he felt bad about each new Genet letter in The New Yorker . For Doug they kept Jean-Paul alive, the smashed auto racer he had slept with, boy and man, during the two decades he'd worked for NATO in France. Dave's stomach muscles grabbed. He wanted to shout, Turn it off! He didn't shout. They never shouted at each other. They weren't on that kind of footing. And maybe that was too bad. He said: 
    "That's the kitchen phone. You're cooking. So this call doesn't count. I'll be there." 
    "It's the bedroom phone. I'm not cooking. I just got out of the shower." Dave could see him, small, spare, palely naked — so like Rod, his own dead who wouldn't lie down-hunching a shoulder to hold the receiver while he scrubbed his shag of graying hair with one of Rod's red towels and dripped on Rod's white rug. "I've been at the shop since morning." He meant Sawyer's Pet Shop, kept by his bright, beaky little mother in one of those gray enclaves of neglect Los Angeles calls neighborhood business districts. "Emergency. The front of the big aquarium gave. We lost a lot of