Mausoleum by Justin Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

I’m sticking with the BLT salad. Though the mushroom omelet is excellent.”
    â€œThank you, Ben.” She settled down, reached across the table and clasped my hand.
    I said, “That feels wonderful,” which it did—an electric tingle like champagne bubbles on the tongue—wonderful enough to seriously consider slinging her over my shoulder and carrying her upstairs to the Yankee Drover’s famously romantic B&B room, the Organza Suite, in hopes of getting her clothes off before she located a pistol. But even though I thought I saw a look in her eye that said she wouldn’t hunt too hard, and even though it seemed reasonable to wonder if she too was considering a second chance for us, I had to say, “Wonderful, but…”
    â€œBut, what?”
    â€œBut I’m afraid we have company.”
    Out the window we could see her wiry, little partner Arnie Bender alight from an unmarked State Police Crown Victoria. Behind it was a “company car,” a dinky Ford Focus with government plates and two suits inside who looked like some kind of low-rent Feds. Immigration, I guessed, or DEA bureaucrats. Across the street Oliver Moody sat in his cruiser, expressionless as a coyote counting house cats.
    â€œOh shit,” said Marian. “Ben, I gotta go. I’m really sorry.”
    I watched from the window as she hurried down the Drover’s front walk and shook hands all around. Then everybody piled into the cars and drove off quickly, while I wondered what in hell was going on.
    ***
    I was halfway through my BLT salad when Dan Adams rose from the bankers’ and lawyers’ table and walked across the restaurant to mine. At the meeting at Grace’s house Dan had been strongly in favor of hiring me. I motioned to Marian’s chair and invited him to sit.
    â€œYour date left early.” He looked nervous and his nervousness made him more than usually combative. In high school basketball, Dan had always been the kid that the Newbury Colonials could count on to foul out.
    â€œThat was no date, that was a peace officer.”
    â€œReally? With a behind like that?”
    â€œAnd a very good friend. How are you doing, Dan?”
    â€œIs she really a cop?”
    â€œShe is a State Police detective lieutenant, a walking arsenal, and possesses a mind quicker than anything you can buy from Dell. How are you doing, Dan?”
    â€œShouldn’t the guy paying you be asking how you are doing?”
    â€œOh I’m doing very well, thank you for asking.”
    â€œCome on Ben.”
    â€œI predict, as I have been predicting all along, that the cops will announce a suspect soon. Either a name we all know. Or a stranger in town.”
    Dan did not react to that, saying only, “I thought we were paying you to get him first?”
    â€œTell me something, Dan?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIs there something you guys aren’t telling me?”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œBut you and Rick Bowland do seem obsessed.”
    â€œWe already told you we’re just afraid that they’ll fool the judge into thinking that we are incompetent cronies who will destroy the association if the insurgents aren’t restored to power.”
    I almost repeated Henry Kissinger’s nasty take on academia: ‘The infighting was so vicious because the stakes were so small’. But Dan looked so unhappy that I could not quote such meanness. Particularly when he said loudly enough for the whole dining room to hear, “I mean I’ve got family in that ground, Ben. You’ve got family in there, too.”
    â€œRick doesn’t,” I advocated for the Devil.
    Dan climbed very high on his horse. “The insurgents are pushing the kind of change that would change the cemetery forever. Rick Bowland is the kind of newcomer who works hard to keep this town the way it should be, not change it.”
    I said. “I would believe that sentiment more from a