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

when I got back from the men’s room. But she forgot her wallet she was so desperate to escape.’

He gave her his best boyish grin, the one that would have given Guillory a difficult decision—reach for a bucket or poke him in the eye. Then he dug the wallet out of his pocket, handed it to her. She opened it, looked inside. She ignored the cash, glanced briefly at the driver’s license, pulled out the folded photograph. He pointed at it.

‘You can tell LeClair that’s where I got the secret phone number.’

She wasn’t listening. She’d unfolded the photograph. Her face fell momentarily as if he was here to report her sister’s death and he’d brought along an autopsy photograph to prove it. Then she recovered, worked a smile back onto her face, even if it did take a moment or two to warm up properly.

‘I remember that.’

They’d stopped at the foot of the stairs. She was still staring at the photograph when a man appeared at the top of them.

‘Blair. Your father’s waiting.’

Evan recognized the voice immediately. LeClair.

‘We’ll be up in a minute, Aldrich.’

She made it sound like, run along now. Despite her tone, he stayed standing where he was. A minor power play was in progress. She looked at the photograph a while longer, some of the forced smile slipping, revealing the sadness underneath. Then she folded it, tucked it into her pocket.

Evan followed her up the stairs, careful not to stare too openly at her shapely calves while LeClair was watching. At the top, he stuck out his hand.

‘Hello Aldrich.’

LeClair did a good job of not grimacing. Evan pumped his hand energetically like an over-enthusiastic car salesman.

‘Mr Buckley.’

Evan wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d excused himself, gone to scrub his hand with bleach.

They all trooped down the corridor towards the master bedroom about a mile and a half away. It was an eerily quiet procession. The thick carpet absorbed their footsteps, none of them saying anything the whole way. Evan was too busy wondering how things would pan out. LeClair’s nose was out of joint. And Blair was lost somewhere in the past, still under the influence of the photograph.

Thomas Carlson was sitting in a chair as old as he was in front of an open floor-to-ceiling window, a plaid rug around his thin legs. Despite the open window, the room smelled of long-term illness, of the slow failure of the body and the steps taken to ease it. Blair saw the window, strode across the room to close it.

‘Leave it.’

Carlson’s voice left no doubt as to who was in charge despite his age and apparent frailty. Blair tut-tutted and stepped away again as a gust of wind caught the drapes.

‘This is the private investigator,’ LeClair said. He did an excellent job of making it sound like he was introducing the man who mucked out the stables.

‘I can see that,’ Carlson said. ‘You can go now. You too, Blair.’

Neither of them objected. Evan gave LeClair a cheery wave as they left, got a scowl back from him and a quick smile from Blair. Then Carlson surprised him.

‘You’ll have to show me how to do that.’

‘What?’

‘Get under his skin like that. He drives me to distraction, treating me like I’m senile. The body’s given up but there’s nothing wrong with my mind. Tell me what you know about my daughter.’

Evan got a mental picture of the shapely legs he’d followed up the stairs.

‘She seems very nice. I don’t think she and Aldrich get along.’

Carlson gawked, then broke into a wheezing cough-cum-laugh.

‘Not Blair, you idiot. Arabella. And don’t make me laugh or they’ll be in here fussing over me thinking I’m dying.’

The comment made Evan look at him more closely, the reason for his presence becoming clearer. Carlson wasn’t simply old, he was sick, a graveyard pallor on his skin, an unhealthy aura clinging to him, the strain of keeping death waiting too long showing in the lines on his face. He ran through the story again with the same omissions. The way Carlson studied him as he talked made him think he’d be giving the unedited version before he left the room. He got the same feeling he always did when he was with his mentor, Elwood Crow—like a laboratory rat pinned to a board, his innards spread wide. Carlson wasn’t simply listening to the details of his story, he was assessing the messenger, the assessment more useful to him than the meager details he provided.

Carlson stuck out a bony hand when he’d finished.

‘Let me see the wallet.’

‘I gave it to Blair.’

Carlson held his breath as if controlling his temper and frustration at the lack of mobility that prevented him from rushing from the room and leaping down the stairs after his youngest daughter. Evan took the opportunity to ask a long-overdue question.

‘You want to tell me what this is all about?’

Carlson ignored or didn’t hear him.

‘Was there anything in it? Any ID?’

‘Only an expired driver’s license with a Boston address. Somewhere on Commonwealth Avenue.’

Carlson shook his head, the frustration still on his face, in his voice.

‘I sold that place years ago.’

If Carlson had been younger and less frail Evan would’ve shaken him. As it was, he re-phrased his earlier question into a statement.

‘I assume she’s disappeared and you want me to find her.’

There was no need to state the obvious corollary—before it’s too late.

Carlson nodded wearily as if the disappointment at the lack of any clues to his daughter’s whereabouts in her wallet had drained him, the spike in his excitement at the discovery of the wallet doing nothing more than provoking a harder fall when it proved to be useless. Then he dismissed him with a flick of his hand, a curt instruction to talk to Blair or that idiot Aldrich.

Evan slipped quietly out of the room, left the old man staring out of the open window at a past that might never catch up with him.

4

Blair was waiting for him at the bottom of the