Tight Lines by William G. Tapply Read Free Book Online Page A

manually, and it moved up through the building slowly. It gave me time to imagine what we might find in Mary Ellen’s rooms.
    I have friends who are homicide detectives. They have described for me in gleefully colorful language the odor a human corpse gives off after a few days in a heated and poorly ventilated room. They have told me how a body bloats, how it discolors, how houseflies lay their eggs on it and how those eggs hatch into maggots. They have described bodies that were found hanging by the neck, how the eyes bulge, and bodies that left impossibly large puddles of dried black blood on a linoleum floor, and bodies that drowned in bathtubs, and bodies that lay in bed for weeks after they had ceased functioning.
    I tried not to think about dead bodies. The harder I tried, naturally, the more vivid became the images that whirled in my brain.
    Jill Costello stood beside me, operating the elevator. The top of her head didn’t quite reach my shoulder. She was staring up at the blinking lights. I hoped, for her sake, that she didn’t have friends who were homicide detectives.
    The elevator opened into a large square hallway. Four doors opened onto it. Jill led me to the one marked 4-B. She paused outside it, then rapped on it with her knuckles. “Mary Ellen. It’s Jill. Can I come in for a minute?”
    She stood with her head cocked to the side for a minute. Then she looked up at me and shrugged. “Let’s go in.”
    She took a ring of keys from her pocket, twisted one of them in the lock, and turned the knob. The door swung inward. It didn’t come up against a chain lock. This I took as a small positive sign.
    Jill pushed it all the way open. She gestured with the palm of her hand. “After you.”
    I stepped inside. I took a small, tentative breath through my nose.
    It smelled musty, closed in, empty.
    It didn’t smell fetid.
    I turned to Jill. “Come on in. I think it’s okay.”
    “You were thinking…?”
    I nodded.
    I switched on the light. The door opened directly into a large living room. A small area was sectioned off into a dining area. There was a rectangular drop-leaf maple table with eight matching chairs, matching buffet and china closet. Cherry, I guessed, with lots of fancy scrollwork. The larger half of the room contained a baby grand piano, two sofas, a big leather armchair, and a wall-sized shelved unit that held a television, VCR, stereo system, books, a few potted plants, and knick-knacks.
    The knickknacks were pieces of pottery and crude statues and carvings. The pottery looked Indian. The sculptures and carved pieces were erotic.
    The potted plants were dead.
    Over the piano hung a huge oil portrait. I recognized the subject. It was Charles Ames, Mary Ellen’s father, at least twice as big as life in her Beacon Hill living room. A craggy man of about sixty in the painting, with a magnificent head of curly steel-gray hair, shaggy gray eyebrows, long, lumpy nose, and the same sensuous mouth that I had seen in the photograph of Mary Ellen. I had seen photos of Charles at Susan’s house in Concord. Susan had no oil portraits of her late husband.
    A small floodlight attached to the ceiling, which had gone on when I’d thrown the room switch, illuminated the painting.
    “So what are we looking for?” said Jill.
    I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    We went into the kitchen. Appliances of every description lined the counters. Microwave, blender, toaster oven, food processor, cappuccino machine, coffee machine, coffee bean grinder. Other things the function of which was not apparent to me.
    In the sink was a coffee mug and a bowl with a spoon in it. I bent to examine the bowl. A patch of green mold was growing on the bottom.
    I opened the refrigerator. A few bottles of white wine lay on their sides. A brown head of lettuce in a plastic bag. Some Schweppes ginger ale. Half a dozen cans of Coors beer. A cardboard carton of milk.
    I removed the milk and opened it.
    “Whew!” said Jill.
    The milk