Uncivil Seasons by Michael Malone Read Free Book Online Page A

stomach.”
    Mrs. Cadmean looked over at the tap of snow gusts hitting against the window. “Is the theory that she surprised a burglar?”
    “Yes. This evening we recovered the silverware and have arrested a suspect.”
    She didn’t seem much interested in this fact. “Some coins were taken? I think I read in the paper.”
    “A collection that had belonged to her first husband, Bainton Ames.”
    “Yes. Bainton had showed me his coins often.”
    “They were kept in a safe in her bedroom. It was flimsy, easy to jimmy open.”
    “She was beaten over the head, is that right?”
    “With a trophy from her desk. The blow killed her. But the killer also smothered her. With a pillow.”
    “Another play,” Mrs. Cadmean said.
    I assumed she meant
Othello
, but the plot of a jealous husband’s suffocating an unfaithful wife seemed to have little bearing on the Dollards.
    I watched the beautiful profile stare silently into the fire, her eyes darkening, unfathomable as the black lake outside. “Did you find a diary, Justin?”
    “Pardon? A diary? No.” I stood up. “Why are you asking me all this about Cloris’s death? Miss Cadmean said you think someone is trying to kill
you
. Do you think they’re the same person?”
    The pencil scratched firmly over the page, blotting the drawing. She closed the book, and shut her eyes. Just as I began to worry that she was preparing to go into some kind of trance, she said calmly, “You know a little about my…past.”
    “I know you’re the psychic, Joanna Griffin. My partner Cuddy is a great admirer of yours. The truth is, from the way he’s talked about you, I thought you’d be a whole lot older. His file on you stops about fifteen years ago. He thought you were dead.”
    She tugged down the cuffs of her sweater sleeves; it was a curiously nervous gesture in someone so otherwise composed, and one she repeated a number of times during our talk. “Your friend is right. Joanna Griffin did pass away a long while back. I guess you could say I went out of business. So, now I want to be very careful in what I say to you… I asked you about a diary because I think Cloris wants someone to find it.”
    “Rowell would know if she kept one, wouldn’t he? Her husband. Do you know Rowell Dollard?”
    Her voice dropped, and she looked down at her sketch. “Oh, yes, I know Rowell.”
    “That’s right; he was assistant solicitor when you worked with the department. Were you friendly with him and Cloris?”
    “I was friendlier with Cloris earlier, when she was married to Bainton Ames. My husband and I used to play bridge with her and Bainton.” Joanna smiled, pulled over the sketchbook, and started a new drawing. “Cloris and I were different in personality.”
    “Yes.” As earth and air.
    “But we played bridge very well together. People occasionally accused us of cheating, but it was just…”
    “Mental telepathy.”
    “I suppose so.”
    “Could you use it to help my partner win the basketball pool?” I was joking but she gave me a serious answer.
    “Unfortunately, Justin, it doesn’t work when I want it to. Just when it wants to.” Now she began speaking with the slow precision of a translator, her pencil pressing harder into the paper. “Thoughts…pictures…come to me
very
vividly. At times they are so strong, I have to act. When I went that first time to the Hillston police, about where the two girls were buried? That picture of the graves in that basement felt like the kind of headache where you can’t bear the slightest sliver of light in the room.”
    “I’ve had that kind of headache too, without any accompanying epiphany.”
    She turned and looked so deeply and for so long without blinking straight into my eyes that I grew embarrassed by the intimacy. Finally she whispered, “You have very beautiful eyes. They’re quite open.”
    Neither of us spoke until a whistle of wind blew down the chimney, flurrying sparks in the fire. Then she said, “I have to be