Edenville Owls by Robert B. Parker Read Free Book Online Page B

I said. “How about you? What do you want to do?”
    “I’m supposed to marry a nice man, live in a nice house, have enough money, have nice children,” she said. “You know?”
    “Stay here?”
    “I guess so,” Joanie said. “I think I’m supposed to go where my husband’s job takes us.”
    “You sound funny about it,” I said. “You want to get married?”
    “I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t want to be an old maid.”
    “No,” I said.
    “You want to get married?” Joanie said.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “What if you don’t?”
    I was quiet for a time.
    “Maybe,” I said, “if you didn’t get married, and I didn’t get married by the time we were, like, thirty-five, we could go someplace and live together.”
    “Where?” Joanie said.
    “Writers can live anywhere they want,” I said.
    “If you didn’t live here, where would you live?” Joanie said.
    “I’d like to live in New York,” I said.
    “New York City?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’d be afraid to live in New York City,” Joanie said.
    “Even with me?” I said.
    “I wouldn’t be scared there with you.”
    “And I wouldn’t have to go to New York,” I said.
    “Because of me?”
    “Sure,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to make you go someplace you didn’t want to go.”
    Joanie smiled and shook her head.
    “You’re not like other boys, Bobby,” Joanie said.
    I was wading pretty deep into waters I didn’t know much about.
    “Is that good or bad?” I said.
    “Good,” Joanie said. “I just hope growing up doesn’t change you.”
    “It won’t change me,” I said. “At least not about you.”
    “We’ll always be friends,” she said.
    “Forever,” I said.
    “Yes,” Joanie said. “Forever.”

CHAPTER 20
    I was alone, standing out of the light, near some bushes, in front of Miss Delaney’s house when the man came again. He parked his car and got out and walked up to the door and rang the bell. In a minute Miss Delaney let him in and the door closed behind them and everything was quiet.
    I felt helpless, like a little kid.
    Figure it out. You’re smart. Figure it out.
    I walked slowly around the house. Maybe there was a way to get in. If I got in, I could hide and maybe listen to them next time the man came to talk with Miss Delaney. Miss Delaney lived upstairs. Old Lady Coughlin lived downstairs. She had some kind of little furry black and white dog with a sharp nose and thin legs. As I walked around the house, the dog started yapping and Old Lady Coughlin came to the back door and looked out. I stopped stock-still in the shadow of some bushes and she didn’t see me, and after a minute she went away. I kept moving around the house, staying in the shadows and behind bushes. In back of the house there were two porches, one above the other, one on the first floor and one on the second. Above the second-floor porch was a window. Probably to the attic.
    Back out front, I looked at the man’s car and had a thought. No one was on the street. I walked toward the car and looked at the house. I didn’t see anyone in the windows. I tried the car door on the passenger side. It was open. Nobody locked up much in Edenville. I opened the door, opened the glove compartment, and took a peek. The car registration was in a small leather wallet in the glove compartment. I took it and closed the glove compartment, closed the door, and ran like hell.
    Under a light on the wharf, I opened the registration. His name was Oswald Tupper, and his address was 132 County Road in Searsville, which was the next town north of Edenville. I always carried a pencil stub and a little notebook in case I saw something I needed to write down. I took them out, wrote down the name and address, put them back in my shirt pocket, and threw the wallet with the registration into the water. It floated for a while, bumping with the little waves against the foot of the wharf, and then, as the water soaked in, it sank.
    I walked up to the bandstand and