Except for the Bones by Collin Wilcox Read Free Book Online Page B

Carolyn—Miss Estes. You probably didn’t notice it Saturday when we flew up to the Cape, but she was in a pretty strange mood. She was—” The word was out before the terrible realization registered: he’d said was. Past tense. But if he corrected himself he compounded the blunder. So, smooth-talking, the maestro of deal-making, he heard himself saying: “She’s pretty heavily into cocaine. You probably don’t know that, but she is. And the past couple of days—” Projecting a wry puzzlement, he shook his head. “The past couple of days, she was really running wild. That’s, ah—” He broke off. Then, the ultimate gamble, he said, “That’s what happened last night. That’s the reason we didn’t go back to New York with you last night.”
    “Ah.” Thoughtfully sipping the beer, Kane was nodding. “I was wondering, yeah.” The other man was reacting well within himself. Watching. Waiting. And, plainly, speculating.
    “What happened last night,” Daniels said, “she got coked up. Really coked up. About eight o’clock, I think it was. And—well—she started an argument. A fight, really. I mean, she started hitting me. So—” He raised his pinstriped shoulders, a carefully calculated shrug. “So I hit her back. So, Christ, the next thing I know, she’s out the door. She had a set of keys to the Jeep, and she was going to take the goddamn car. And—well …” He was pleased with the pause, with the timing, the tempo. Yes, it would work out. He could feel it, sense it. “Well, I stopped her. I clobbered her. I didn’t have a choice, unless I wanted her to get into that Jeep, which I didn’t. So, Christ, the next thing I know, she’s taken off.”
    Kane frowned. “She took off? Where?”
    “The last I saw of her, she was walking across the dunes, toward Carter’s Landing. That was about eight-thirty, I guess. Of course, I expected her to come back, but she never did.”
    “So she stayed in Carter’s Landing last night …” It was a speculative comment, dubiously delivered.
    Once more, Daniels shrugged. “For all I know, she could’ve taken a cab, and gone to New York. I wouldn’t doubt it.”
    “So why’re you telling me about it?”
    A final pause—one last handhold, surrendered. Then: “It’s about that letter you gave me. That hand-delivered letter.”
    Kane made no reply. Instead, he lifted his glass, drank the beer, watched Daniels over the foam-flecked rim of his glass.
    “It was from someone named Jeff Weston. I’ve got his phone number. He was—I guess he saw what happened. Maybe he thought I was—” Suddenly his throat closed. But only for a moment. “He might’ve thought I really hurt Carolyn. Seriously. All the noise she was making—shouting and screaming—I can understand how he’d think that. So now he wants to—he wants me to call him. It’s—obviously, it’s blackmail. So what I want, what I’d like you to do, is—” How should he say it? Did he need to say it? Cautiously, covertly, he searched the other man’s face.
    No, he didn’t need to say it. All he had to do was wait for Kane to finish his beer, place the glass on the table, and say, “Is it like that driver you had—Gordon Betts? Is that the way you want it handled?”
    Conscious of the sudden lightness, of the overwhelming rush of relief, he nodded—once, then once again.
    “Same terms?” Kane asked.
    “Better.”
    “Better?”
    “Better. Much better.”

4:30 P.M., EDT
    A S SHE SLID HER key in the lock and turned the knob, she felt it beginning: the leaden void at the center of herself, the heaviness dragging at her arms, her legs, even the muscles of her neck. If this was home, it was the burden that never ended.
    “Diane?” It was her mother’s voice, from down the hallway, from her bedroom, her dressing room. Yes, the timing was right. At four-thirty on a given afternoon, her mother would be dressing to go out. Millicent Crowley Cutler Daniels, exactly forty years old. Gown