Little Dog Laughed by Joseph Hansen Read Free Book Online

bar at the near end of the room and built himself a double martini. He switched on sound equipment, and violins, viola, cello sang from a compact disc—the Haydn opus 20, number 5 quartet. He sat down, pried off his shoes, and with a sigh stretched out on a couch to drink his martini, smoke a cigarette, and listen. And the telephone rang. Of course. He stretched an arm for it.
    “I’ve been trying to reach you all day.” It was Otis Lovejoy at Banner Insurance, a sleek black executive with sad eyes. “You should get an answering machine.”
    “I have one, but I hate the damn things, don’t you?”
    “It’s about the Streeter death,” Lovejoy said. “They’ve got the killer. A man who worked for Streeter.”
    “Mike Underhill,” Dave said. “I know, but—”
    “He had a hundred thousand dollars of Streeter’s money, and he was about to fly to Algeria with it.”
    “So why hadn’t he packed?” Dave said. “His grips are in his bedroom closet, covered with dust.”
    “You were at his place?” Lovejoy chuckled. “I’m always amazed at how fast you work.”
    “I thought he’d have Streeter’s papers. They’re missing. They shouldn’t be missing, Otis. Whoever killed him took his papers. Underhill didn’t have them, so it wasn’t Underhill.”
    “What kind of papers?” Lovejoy said.
    Dave told him. He finished, “The story was so dangerous he didn’t want his daughter to know about it. It was so dangerous it killed him. That’s what kind of papers.”
    “Forget it,” Lovejoy said. “All we needed to know was that he didn’t kill himself. He met death at the hands of another. And the other was not the beneficiary. I’ve already approved payment on the policy to his daughter.”
    “Don’t send the check,” Dave said. “Make up excuses. If you send it now, the mother will spend it on booze.”
    “All right if I send you your check?” Lovejoy said.
    “All donations gratefully received,” Dave said, and rattled the receiver into place. And Cecil came in, smiling. Dave smiled back. “I was hoping for this.” He started to get up. “A drink?”
    “I’ll get it.” Cecil went behind the bar and bent his long, lean self over the small refrigerator there. He came bearing a frosty green Heineken bottle and a glass. “Whew.” He plumped down on the couch, and tilted the bottle so the beer piled up foam in the glass. “They are working my black butt off at that place.”
    “God forbid.” Dave leaned up and gave him a quick kiss. “Do you have to go back tonight? You look used up.”
    “I’m on call, all right? Till ten thirty. And until ten thirty, I am very likely to sleep.”
    Dave knocked back his martini and rose, pushing feet into shoes. “I’ll fix you something to eat, first.”
    Cecil caught his belt and pulled him back down. “Relax. No need to cook. Supper’s in the cookshack, the warming oven. I stopped at Max’s on my way home.” He meant Max Romano’s restaurant, Dave’s favorite haunt. Cecil set glass and bottle on a coffee table among fancifully painted Mexican pottery owls and cats. He went to the bar with Dave’s glass. “I figured you’d be tired too, up half the night typing that report for Goldring, then starting a new case today.” His hands worked in the shadows with gin, vermouth, and ice that jingled cheerfully in a Swedish crystal pitcher. “How does that one look?”
    “It looks all wrong.” Dave told Cecil about it. Halfway through, Cecil brought him an icy glass and set it in his hand. He dropped onto the couch and slumped there, long legs stretched out, sipping at his beer, and listening while Haydn sweetened the background. Dave finished, “But whatever it was, it wasn’t suicide, and so I’m off it.”
    Cecil got up and went for another Heineken, saying, “Streeter was at my workplace the night he was killed.”
    Dave sat up straight. “You’re not serious.”
    “You remember how late I got home? Working on that killing down in