One Grave Too Many by Ron Goulart Read Free Book Online Page B

the money first ourselves.”

CHAPTER 11
    “Y OU LOOK LIKE YOU didn’t get much sleep,” said Nan as Easy came in from the midday parking lot behind his office. “What’s been happening to you?”
    Easy set his bundle of borrowed archeology books on the edge of the desk. “I didn’t get much sleep and somebody threw a chair at me.”
    “A chair?” His secretary gave a final delicate twist to the air conditioner control.
    “And our new client was in it at the time.” He slumped into his swivel chair. “Our new client is Gary Marks.”
    “You found him?”
    Nodding, Easy said, “Remember when everybody used to talk about the domino theory?”
    “Knock one over and the next one falls and so on and so on.”
    “This is a case like that. Finding Gay Holland’s lost brother is only the start of something.”
    “What kind of something?”
    “Right now it looks like a treasure hunt,” said Easy. “God knows what it’ll turn into when the next domino falls over.”
    Nan came across the room to look, head tilted, at the stack of books. “Oh, I almost forgot. There was a cable from Jill.”
    “Where is it?”
    “They don’t give you anything tangible, they call on the phone,” explained Nan. “The message was ‘Arrived safely. Miss you already. Love, Jill.’ You’re probably not used to getting sentimental messages like that.”
    “No, especially third hand.”
    At the doorway to the outer office Nan asked, “Want me to fetch you something to eat?”
    “I had some breakfast at home about an hour ago,” Easy said. “Maybe later you can get me a corned beef on rye from across the street.”
    “You really ought to cut down on those. I worry about your intake of nitrates … or is it nitrites.” She returned to her desk.
    Easy picked up the top book on the stack and began going through it. He learned several things about Roman forts but nothing about where the Marquetti money might be buried or hidden. The next book was called Introduction To Archeology. On page 14 he found what he was after.
    “Aha,” he said.
    Nan reappeared in the doorway. “You’ve discovered something?”
    Steepling the book, Easy reached for a memo pad. “This is the message old Vincent Marquetti left for his son.” He wrote PD Angelo S15W4.
    “Oh, certainly,” said Nan, rubbing her broad nose with her thumb knuckle, “that’s a simple archeologist’s way of designating a spot to dig at a particular site.”
    Easy narrowed his left eye. “You’re an archeology buff?”
    “I was engaged once to a guy whose ambition was to go to Mexico and excavate ruins. So I heard a lot about it,” said Nan. “He did finally go, with some twenty year old stewardess. I don’t think he ever dug up anything.”
    “I just came across the explanation in this book,” said Easy. “Apparently you pick a fixed point and rule an area into five foot squares. Then you label each square as it relates to the fixed point.”
    “That’s right. Your square is fifteen squares south and five west of the point.”
    “That’s what PD stands for, point of departure.”
    “Is that where the treasure’s going to be buried?”
    “Must be,” said Easy. “The only problem is trying to figure out where the starting point is. That’s what Angelo refers to, I imagine.”
    “Could be somebody’s name, could be a place,” said Nan, “or maybe an angel.”
    “That’s what Angelo means in Italian,” said Easy. “So someplace in this city of angels we have to find one specific angel and start digging.”
    “Probably isn’t a person. He wouldn’t stay still enough to be a fixed point. Might be a statue or something like that.”
    Easy tore off the memo page, folded it and dropped it in the jacket pocket of his $250 suit. “Saw some statues up at Gay Holland’s Beverly Hills place. I’ll see if she knows anything about this angel.”
    “It’s urgent, is it?”
    “Where Gary Marks was,” said Easy, “was in the hands of a couple guys