Dig Two Graves by James Harper (important books to read .txt) 📗

filed it away, glad he’d put his big brain in that morning there was so much he was having to stuff into it.

He was also reminded of her words earlier, talking about her sister.

Blair’s stronger than she looks.

Then he asked a question he had no expectation of getting an honest answer to.

‘Do you know why he did it?’

He was tempted to put his hand to his forehead, press it against the window and yell, here it comes, a big fat lie. She didn’t disappoint.

‘No idea. Maybe the stock market dipped and wiped a few billion off the family fortune.’

He wasn’t really listening, his mind too overwhelmed.

Gerald Bloodwell’s only son had committed suicide. Did he blame his son’s wife, Blair? Her family? Bella’s flippant remark about the family fortune could be the reason. But so could any one of a thousand family problems.

All he knew for sure was that if Bella knew, she wasn’t telling him.

‘Was it suspicious in any way?’

‘No. The police were satisfied that it was suicide.’

She didn’t volunteer how he’d killed himself and he didn’t ask. It didn’t make a difference either way. But he couldn’t ignore the discrepancy between the words he was hearing and the ones already in his mind, courtesy of the man masquerading as Detective O’Brien.

Ms Carlson’s brother-in-law died in suspicious circumstances.

She was still staring out of the window. He guessed it wasn’t the sky that she saw with its possibility of rain, but something from the past, something with an absolute certainty of problems building like thunder clouds overhead. And it was his job to hold the shitstorm-proof umbrella. There was a melancholy note to her voice when she spoke and gave him the first insight into herself.

‘It’s partly why I’m not interested in money. Having it, flaunting it, wanting more of it. I know you’re thinking that’s rich coming from someone who’s going to inherit a ton of it. But I’ve seen what it does to people. I’ve seen how it does everything except make them happy. It changes them. They become obsessed with it. And they think they can do anything they like because they’re rich.’

He tuned her out as she got into her stride, nodded along and contributed the occasional uh-huh and you got it. He caught the name Gerald Bloodwell in there at one point. He didn’t know who she was trying to convince, him or herself. Both of them, most likely. And it was muddying the waters again. If she was right about people becoming obsessed with it, wanting more of it for its own sake despite how much they already had, then maybe Merritt wasn’t out of the running after all.

The diatribe on the evils of money and the people who have it and the people who want it was the only glimpse into her life, her raison d’être, that he was going to get. You don’t disappear and stay hidden for thirty years if you spill your guts at the drop of a hat, regale everyone you meet with your life story.

So they watched TV and dozed a little and he spent some time thinking of ways to get her back home safely. It was dark outside when the phone rang and made them both jump. His heartbeat picked up as he answered.

‘Mr O’Brien?’

There was something strange about the clerk’s voice. It was definitely him, but he sounded strained. There could’ve been a gun to his head. Except he didn’t sound scared, no tell-tale tremor in his voice. He sounded as if he was having trouble stopping himself from snickering. Despite that, Evan remembered who he was supposed to be.

‘Yeah.’

‘You might want to come down to the office. And don’t forget to bring your wallet.’

His pulse raced a little faster at the word wallet. The creep had something worth selling. It could only be one thing. He let himself out into the darkness of the parking lot, feeling good about removing the bulb from the overhead light earlier. He slipped around the back, skirted the whole building, came at the other room he’d paid for from the opposite direction. The door and frame were intact, no recent additions to the many scuffs and scratches in the paintwork. He headed for the office, wondered if the clerk was about to try to con him.

The guy looked exactly like a person looking forward to doubling his earlier earnings in the next two minutes when Evan walked in. He stuck out his hand, palm upwards. Evan put a fifty in it. Nothing happened. He looked the clerk in the eye. The clerk looked right back. Without warning he snatched the note out of the clerk’s still-outstretched hand, took a couple paces towards the door.

‘You’ve told me all I need to know. You can’t be trusted. We’re leaving right now.’

‘Wait.’

He stopped short at the insistent edge to the clerk’s voice. It wasn’t only the prospect of losing the fifty bucks. He knew something.

‘Somebody called.’

He walked back, laid the fifty in the clerk’s hand, folded his fingers around it. Squeezed his whole hand good and tight until a hiss of pain told him the guy got the message.

‘Tell me.’

‘It was the police. They were asking if anyone had checked in driving an old Ford Taurus with your license plate number.’

‘What did you tell them?’

The clerk tried to give him an indignant look. It didn’t work out, looked like he’d eaten something that disagreed with him.

‘I told him no. What do you think? Then I called you like I promised.’

Evan did the translation from slimeball to English.

They didn’t offer me any money for the information.

He was at the door when the clerk called out to him.

‘Don’t you want to know who it was called?’

‘You told me. The police.’

The clerk was grinning now. With three hundred bucks in his pocket, days didn’t come much better than this.

‘I mean his name. Detective Liam O’Brien. Sounds like you’re looking for yourself.’

Evan could still hear him laughing halfway back to the room. He’d have liked to