Devil Red by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online Page B

trees?”
    “I can’t believe a place like this is anywhere,” I said. “I thought they made this stuff up for the movies.”
    “The movie screen wouldn’t be wide enough to hold this place,” Leonard said. “It might take a few theaters just to get that hallway in frame.”
    A moment later a woman came into the room. She was some woman. She looked like she was dressed to go out on the town, and not our town. Someplace in Manhattan, perhaps Paris, London, or Rome. Her long blonde hair was waved and she wore a pantsuit of shimmering white and she had a small glass in her hand and it was half-filled with a golden liquid that I knew wasn’t fruit juice.
    “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said. It was a nice voice full of pep and insincerity. “I’m June. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t offer you a drink. I thought we could race through this rather quickly.”
    “That’s fine,” I said.
    She came and sat in a leather chair across from us and put her drink down on the wooden coffee table between us, no coaster. It was a heavily stained table and it was the only thing in the room besides the books that looked old.
    “So, you’re private detectives,” June said, smiling. She had nice teeth and just the slightest bit of an overbite.
    “We’re not exactly private detectives,” I said.
    “Oh,” she said.
    “We’ve still got the training wheels on,” Leonard said.
    “So should you be on the job?” she asked.
    “We’ve had a lot of experience,” I said. “We’re just not what you’d call official. We’re operatives. We work for a private detective.”
    “So someday you may get a little badge, a whistle, and a canteen,” she said.
    “Our boss,” Leonard said, “he started with Where’s Waldo books to sharpen us up, but now we’ve moved on to interviews. We mostly ask short questions.”
    “I see,” she said. She grinned and leaned back and sipped her drink and studied Leonard, then me. Her eyes were very green and very penetrating.
    “You boys look a little rough,” she said. “Like you’ve been around the block a few times.”
    “Maybe more than a few,” I said.
    “Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it. I like the way you look. Most of the men I know use skin cream and have straight noses and the most violent thing they do is grunt playing table tennis. Sometimes, in their sleep, they fart dramatically. Oh, I’m telling, aren’t I?”
    She moved her head slowly, so we could have a look at her profile, and then she moved it back and sipped her drink.
    “It’s just that I don’t know why my mother is bothering with all this, or why she would send you to talk to me. There’s nothing I can add. Ted and his girlfriend were murdered for sex and money. Though they didn’t get the sex, and my guess is they didn’t get much money.”
    “Do you know what was actually stolen besides his ring?” I asked.
    “Well, he may have had money in the wallet,” June said. “But I don’t know.”
    “Credit cards?”
    “Most likely. Several. Mostly filled to the brim and leaking over, would be my guess.”
    “Did the police say anything about anyone trying to use them after his death?”
    “No. I know you’re thinking that might mean the robbery was a sham. But I think whoever did it panicked and took what was in the wallet and was afraid to use the cards. Afraid they’d be tracked. Or maybe the cards got canceled before the killer could use them, and they just disposed of them.”
    She leaned back in her chair and crossed her long panted legs and dropped her head slightly. I was sure she knew the effect this had; the way her hair fell across one eye, and the way she looked when she lifted her head and smiled that sexy beaver-toothed grin.
    “Look,” she said, “my brother, he and I weren’t close. I’m sorry about what happened to him, but it was an unfortunate accident. Wrong place. Wrong time. I suppose it could have been someone who knew him, knew he was going to be there,