Death in the Secret Garden by Richard; Forrest Read Free Book Online Page B

used-car salesman. How much more typical can you get, Rocco?’
    â€˜Eddy Rashish would sell his grandmother for twenty dollars a week payable every Friday for two years. But I don’t think he would shoot his lover in the lower abdomen.’
    â€˜Maybe he was a bad shot,’ Lyon countered.
    â€˜He might hire a hit man,’ Rocco said. ‘I can see Eddy hiring a guy and paying him off with a bad check. But to make love on a blanket in the woods and then shoot her in the gut … No.’
    â€˜Rocco, Eddy was not a very nice person.’
    â€˜He wasn’t evil either,’ Rocco said contemplatively. ‘Well, he might lie a little about an odometer, a creaky transmission, finance charges, or about divorcing his wife in the near future in order to seduce a girl, but …’
    â€˜OK,’ Lyon said. ‘Another scenario. He takes her to the woods for their usual slap and tickle. When he finds out about the baby he decides to throw a real scare into her. He waves the gun around and it accidently goes off and hits her in the abdomen. There is no way he can explain things so he panics and takes off.’
    â€˜What were Eddy’s dying words?’ Rocco asked.
    Lyon watched Sarge surreptitiously down another quick shot. ‘Something about closing deals and odometers were his last words.’
    â€˜I rest my case on his priorities,’ Rocco said as he slipped off the bar stool. ‘Let’s get on with conversing with Mrs. Anderson.’
    The front and back yards of the Anderson house looked like a rusted lawn sale. Engine blocks without pistons, old lawnmower motors in varying stages of disassembly and other strange pieces of machinery were scattered across the yard. Clustered around the small garage at the rear of the property were three automobiles of unknown vintage that were in dire need of reconstruction. It was a disaster area that was tolerated by the neighborhood because adjacent properties also contained herds of motor vehicles in various stages of perpetual repair.
    The house was a small ranch with a large picture window in the living room. The window faced the street and overlooked a rusting school bus, which sat on concrete blocks. Rocco looked at Lyon with a shrug when the doorbell wouldn’t respond to his touch. He thumped heavily with a door knocker made from a hood ornament.
    A tall man whose body was dominated by an elongated face opened the door to look at them with somber dark eyes.
    â€˜Is Mrs. Anderson home?’ Rocco asked.
    â€˜Sister Anderson is in grief and not receiving.’
    â€˜Tell her Chief Herbert is here to talk about her husband.’
    â€˜I said the sister is not receiving.’
    â€˜Who be you?’ Rocco asked.
    â€˜Pastor of her flock.’
    â€˜You will be herding your flock from my lockup if you don’t produce the lady in five seconds,’ Rocco said in a quiet voice.
    Eliza Anderson had a slight body and a face too deeply grief-worn to have been accumulated in one life. Some of the ravages were inherited from past generations, who had fought icy fish lines off the Grand Banks, or scrabbled a living from Maine’s rock-strewn fields. Lister and Eliza had immigrated from the harsh Maine coast to Connecticut where new generations faced hardships of a different type.
    Eliza had already lost her eldest child when his pickup went airborne after striking a bridge abutment on the interstate. Her daughter Boots occupied a slab in the medical examiner’s office. Her husband was in jail. Her last offspring sat sullenly before the television in his ill-fitting meeting-time clothes and glared at them resentfully. Rocco nodded at the teenager. They were acquainted due to several juvenile charges that would probably escalate in the coming year. Rocco knew it was only a matter of months until the kid would be caught and charged as an adult for grand theft auto. It seemed like an irrevocable