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

listening. They’d reached the distasteful part.

‘You don’t understand. Mr Carlson wants to meet you.’

He made it sound as if Mr Carlson had gotten himself a new hobby and it involved keeping a cardboard box full of cockroaches in the drawing room.

‘Okay. Where are you?’

He needn’t have asked. LeClair’s accent had told him from the moment he opened his mouth.

‘Boston. Mr Carlson will reimburse you for your time and travel expenses, naturally. He’d like you to come immediately.’

Evan didn’t have a problem with that. The hot little worm in his gut wriggled and in his excitement he forgot himself, gave LeClair an easy shot.

‘Can I ask what this is about?’

‘You can ask.’

3

A man in a well-cut suit and a striped tie was waiting for him at Logan International with Buckley scrawled on a piece of card. The lines on his face and the gray in his closely-cropped hair suggested a man in his fifties, although his physique and the way he carried himself, the quiet confidence he exuded, hinted at a much younger man. Evan would have put money on a military background. He also knew from his accent that he wasn’t Aldrich LeClair. They went outside to a Bentley Mulsanne Grand Limousine. Evan admired it, then surprised him by getting into the front beside him.

‘What? Did LeClair tell you to put me in the trunk?’

The driver grinned at him.

‘No. But he said to make sure you get on the right bus.’

‘That’d be the one going in the opposite direction?’

‘That’s the one. Said I’d get a dollar bonus for every mile further away I sent you.’

Evan laughed with him. It was an encouraging start, a good omen for pumping him for information. The chauffeur, whose name was Leon, fell silent as he negotiated the big car through the tourists in their rentals, relaxing again once they’d joined I-90 for the fifteen-mile ride out to Chestnut Hill. Evan made the most of the earlier bonhomie.

‘So who’s this guy Carlson?’

Leon looked sideways at him to see if he was joking, like he’d said Trump and not Carlson.

‘Are you serious? Carlson Communications?’

Evan nodded, none the wiser.

‘Right. Got it. What’s he like?’

Leon rocked his head from side to side.

‘He’s okay. For a guy with all his money. It’s LeClair who’s the asshole. Acts like the money belongs to him.’

‘That’s his job, I suppose.’

‘See if you’re still sticking up for him after you’ve met him.’

Evan didn’t want Leon to get stuck in a rut about his grievances with LeClair. It wasn’t hard to guess what they stemmed from. His assessment of LeClair from talking with him on the phone was of a man around his own age, in his thirties. It was also likely that he was Leon’s immediate boss. Leon didn’t look like the sort of man who enjoyed taking orders from a much younger man, one he had no respect for. Besides, he wasn’t here to talk about LeClair.

‘You worked for Carlson long?’

‘It feels like forever sometimes.’

There was no rancor in his tone, more a comfortable acceptance. Like an old married couple—not sure how you got here, but happy enough all the same.

‘Why does he want to see me?’

Leon shook his head.

‘Above my pay grade.’

‘It’s something to do with his daughter.’

‘Blair?’

‘No, Arabella.’

The traffic suddenly demanded all of Leon’s attention, checking in his side mirror before he pulled out to pass an old VW Beetle. The car surged silently forward as he hit the gas.

‘I love this car.’

Evan did the translation: change the subject.

They passed the remainder of the journey talking about the car and its amazing engine and how the Brits sure knew how to build ’em except it was German really as Bentley was owned by Volkswagen who made the Beetle they’d just passed which was a real classic, an icon, no less. There was even time to talk about all the other expensive toys Thomas Carlson of Carlson Communications owned.

They turned off Woodland Road in Chestnut Hill into a long drive between mature trees. At the end there was a turning circle with a fountain in the middle in front of a house the size of a small town. Perfectly clipped hedges surrounded them and then manicured lawns and more trees, a living hell for anybody allergic to the color green. Leon let him out and disappeared into the next ZIP code to park the car.

He was expecting LeClair to be waiting for him at the top of the steps that led up to the massive front door. Instead it was a woman. As he got closer, he saw that it was an older version of the younger woman in the photograph in Bella’s wallet. She was about fifty, her blond hair now streaked with gray.

He climbed the steps, casting quick surreptitious glances to the side to see if LeClair was lurking in the shrubbery. She smiled at him as he got to the summit, offered him her hand.

‘You must be Mr Buckley. I’m Arabella’s sister, Blair.’

She had a nice cool handshake and a nice warm smile and nice sparkly eyes and was just plain nice all around. With the house and the trees and no LeClair in sight he could get used to this. He told her to call him Evan and she led him inside. It made him wish he’d brought along a bag of breadcrumbs to leave a trail in case he had to find his way back out on his own.

‘Nice house. Must be a bitch to keep clean.’

She gave him another flash of her perfect white teeth, did a good job of pretending she recognized the word clean.

‘Tell me about meeting Arabella.’

He ran through it, not saying anything about the man with the knife. But he mentioned the way she’d sat on Guillory’s stool and refused to move. Blair smiled as she listened.

‘That sounds like her. What made her run off so suddenly?’

He came out with the non-answer he’d decided on while he was on the plane.

‘It must have been something I said. She was gone