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

She held up her hand.

‘Don’t apologize. He had it coming. She said you’ve got a photograph.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Thinking, surely you don’t want to see it?

‘Can I see it?’

It was phrased as a request. He heard a command—let me see it.

‘You sure?’

She nodded, extended her hand towards him. He pulled out his phone, found the image. Didn’t hand it over immediately.

‘You want to tell me why you want to see it?’

‘In case I see him hanging around.’

It was a good, quick answer. It was also a lie. He gave her the phone all the same. She barely looked at it.

‘Can you send it to me?’

There was no point asking why again. Not unless he wanted another lie back. She gave him her number and he sent it over.

Something useful came out of the unusual request. She’d gotten them onto the subject of the bogus Detective O’Brien—what he’d been planning to do himself.

‘The fake cop told me an interesting story.’

‘Really?’

Working hard at sounding nonchalant. Like they were two ordinary people having a coffee in a hospital cafeteria. But her hand trembled when she lifted her cup to her lips. She knew what was coming.

‘I’m sorry to bring this up . . .’

He paused, waited for her to tell him not to worry, nothing was off limits if it helped Bella. An invitation to rip into her, in other words.

‘He said there were suspicious circumstances surrounding your husband’s suicide.’

She was shaking her head already.

‘He also said your sister was suspected of being involved somehow, that the police wanted to interview her about it. And that’s why she disappeared.’

She stared at him open-mouthed for a brief moment, then laughed in his face.

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Let me finish, tell you the problem I’ve got. We all know it’s not about the money. So it’s something else. Somebody’s got a grudge against her. They want revenge. Then I hear a story about her being involved in the death of your husband. What am I supposed to think?’

He let her splutter a while. Then a strangled squeak.

‘You think it’s me?’

He shrugged, a deliberately irritating gesture.

‘You’re hiring me for my nasty suspicious mind.’

‘I’ve never heard anything so absurd.’

She looked around as if she was about to get up and leave, looking for the nearest exit. He put his hand on hers.

‘Of course I don’t think it’s you. But while you’re hiding things from me I might as well go over there’—he pointed at a table on the other side of the room where a man was devouring a slice of pie like he’d just been told he only had ten minutes to live—‘and accuse him. Or maybe her.’ He pointed at a pleasant-looking fat woman. ‘She looks the type to hold a grudge. Maybe Bella made a joke about her weight.’

They stared at each other across the table a long moment. She pulled her hand out from under his.

‘I need to go to the ladies’ room. Don’t worry, I’m not going to run away.’

He thought she had, she was away so long. Either she had a problem with her waterworks or she needed a long time to get her thoughts together. Then it came to him, a mini aha moment. She’d been back to Bella’s room to get the green light on telling him the truth. When she got back, she looked like a woman who’d made a difficult decision but was determined to see it through, a mix of relief and anxiety colliding in her features.

‘You’re right. It’s revenge. It’s my father-in-law, Gerald Bloodwell.’

It looked for a moment like she wasn’t going to say any more. He resisted the urge to make a rolling gesture with his hand, keep it coming. Then she cleared her throat.

‘It’s because of something that happened thirty years ago. It was partly the reason Bella disappeared. She attacked Bloodwell.’ She raised her hand to ward off any potential objections. ‘It’s difficult to believe looking at her now, lying there in her hospital bed. But back then she was in the Marine Corps. It’s a family tradition that the eldest child joined the military. My father was in Korea from 1950 to 1953. Bella didn’t see why it should be any different just because she was a woman. It’s one of the reasons she was his favorite. She joined in 1985 when she was twenty-one, hoping to become the first woman in a combat role. It didn’t happen, of course. Women weren’t allowed to be in combat roles until 2016.

‘By the time she attacked Bloodwell she’d been in for five years. She was a Staff Sergeant at the Parris Island Recruit Depot. The women do the exact same training as the men. They hike the same number of miles with the same weight in their packs and all the rest of it. End result, you didn’t mess with my big sister.’

Evan smiled with her, made an educated guess.

‘Except Bloodwell did.’

‘In a manner of speaking. You don’t need to know what he did, but Bella beat him up. She got a bit carried away. She busted his nose, knocked out a few teeth. Broke some of his fingers.’

He shook his head in disbelief, pointed at his chest.

‘And she said I don’t mess around because of what I did to—’

He stopped mid-sentence at the look on Blair’s face.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

‘That’s not all. After she’d knocked him half unconscious, she poured a pint of whiskey down his throat. Then she dumped him in an alley behind a disgusting sleazy bar and called the police, told them she’d seen two drunks fighting. And she took his wallet. He spent the night in the drunk tank. He didn’t have any ID so when he tried to tell them what a big shot he was, they just laughed at him.’

She was smiling at the memory. Something told him there was still more to come.

‘He was let out in the morning. Somebody’—she did the air quotes thing with her fingers—‘had tipped off the press. There was a big crowd