The Scared Stiff by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online Page B

they didn't want to eat anymore either. After Mike's free round, they began to buy their own drinks, and the occasion turned into a kind of Halloween party, a premature wake, while everybody waited for the police, or Señor Ortiz's ambulance and crew, whichever got there first.
    It was, in fact, the police who arrived first, but not the ones from San Cristobal. He was one young cop from Vista Alegar, who seemed mostly embarrassed to be the center of all this attention. Headquarters at San Cristobal had phoned him, and it was his job to maintain order until more experienced police arrived from the capital. He was given the entire story several times over, was offered (and accepted) a rum drink by Mike, offered in his turn his condolences to Lola, and then decided to sit at her table until reinforcements came. A rich beautiful widow, and a native-born Guerreran at that; he might be young, that cop, but he wasn't foolish.
    An hour and a half after Barry Lee's final flight, Señor Ortiz's ambulance arrived. The three-man crew carried their canvas stretcher and white sheet down under the restaurant and out into the light. They'd also brought along a strong rope, one end of which they tied to a restaurant support pillar, the other to the nearest rear window frame of the Beetle, so they'd have something to hold onto when going out and back. Then they carried the stretcher out to the car, and from above everyone saw that flash of royal blue as the body was moved from Beetle to stretcher.
    And then it was over, or at least the interesting part was over. The body was brought up over the boulders and stuffed into the ambulance, the ambulance drove away, and Señor Ortiz came back in from overseeing the operation to receive the thanks of the proprietor, the admiration of the crowd, a kiss from his adoring Señora Ortiz, and one last complimentary planter's punch for the road.
    Now the patrons began to drift homeward, all pausing for a final word of condolence to the widow, so that it actually was very like a wake, except that the viewing was over. Lola had to stay, of course, to wait for the real cops to arrive from San Cristobal. The bashful young cop had to stay, and the Ortizes, and Mike, but he did send the staff home and from then on tended bar himself.
    Twenty-five minutes after my supposed departure in the ambulance, and two hours and ten minutes after my presumed departure from this life, the police from San Cristobal at last arrived, in two vehicles: a van containing eight uniformed policemen, and a Land Rover bearing a uniformed driver and two inspectors in plain clothes. Well, relatively plain; one, named Rafez, was in an off-white linen suit, pale yellow dress shirt, and tan sandals, while the other, named Loto, wore a pink guayabera shirt, pressed designer blue jeans, and black cowboy boots with silver decorations. Rafez in the suit was the suave one, while Loto in the boots was the blunt pragmatic one.
    At first, when they were introduced to Lola and she said a heartbroken word or two in Guerreran Spanish, these inspectors made the mistake of thinking that her dead husband must be local too, and not the rich northerner they'd been led to believe was the victim here. A dead Guerreran was not worth an exhausting midnight drive across most of Guerrera, as any fool was supposed to know. Until the situation was explained, they were quite frosty, but then, having been assured that Barry Lee, the departed, was indeed a North American, even a New Yorker, they relaxed; their dignity had not been impaired, after all.
    It was Loto, in the boots, who questioned Mike and the Ortizes and the bashful young cop, while Rafez, in his linen suit, joined Lola at her table to murmur delicate questions about her marriage and the events of the night. Lola answered tearfully but bravely, confessing there had been trouble in the marriage recently, brought on by financial reverses they had suffered, and that this vacation had been their last