A Shiver of Wonder Read Online Free Page A

corporate
offices, where both he with his questions and Johnson with his
companionable disposition were always welcome.
    While the subject of the murder had indeed
come up, no one at Culpepper had put together that David lived in
the same building.
    And David hadn’t volunteered this
information to anyone.
    The Shady Grove Courier was full of facts,
speculation, paradoxes, and innuendo in equal measure, exactly what
any self-respecting rag in any city, large or small, would
print. Color pictures of Heck and the Rainbow Arms on page one to
draw in the looky-loos, and then ambiguous quotes from Detective
Ormsby, along with seemingly endless rehashes of the same
information, on the inside.
    Hector Vance lived with Janice Templeton at
565 Piston Avenue.
    Heck Vance did not live at the
Rainbow Arms, but with his sister-in-law in Greenville.
    Janice Templeton was head cashier at the
Bargain Bin at Willow and Eighth.
    Janice Templeton worked as a waitress at The
Hot Spot.
    Heck Vance was a drug dealer.
    Heck Vance worked for a drug
dealer.
    Glass hashish pipes had been found at the
scene, along with vials, digital scales, and zipper storage
bags.
    A backpack belonging to the deceased had
been found that contained drug paraphernalia, but no drugs had been
discovered despite an exhaustive search of the premises.
    The few facts that were apparently not in dispute are as follows: that Hector Vance, a
37-year-old man with an expired driver’s license and a slew of
unpaid parking tickets, had expired himself in the kitchen of
Apartment 1D of the Rainbow Arms. The back of his head had been
stove-in by brute force with an as-yet undetermined weapon. The
murder occurred sometime between the hours of 11:00 a.m. and 2:00
p.m. on Wednesday. When Janice Templeton made the call to the
police at 11:00 p.m. Wednesday night, she was initially the prime
suspect. She was not considered a suspect after officers
determined that she had been 240 miles away, visiting her mother in
the northern part of the state, from Monday evening until she
returned to Shady Grove approximately 52 hours later.
    It was all true. However, no fact
couldn’t be proven untrue with the right set of new facts.
    “Hi, David.”
    David almost fell off the bench. Johnson
stood straight up, ears and tail vertical, but quickly relaxed
again.
    “Hi, Clair. How do you do that?”
    David hadn’t been facing the gate, but his
peripheral vision should have caught the motion as Clair entered
the courtyard. Not to mention the click of the latch opening, the
clunk of gate closing, her footsteps as Clair in those pristinely
clean saddle shoes walked toward him.
    A ghost of a smile. “I don’t know. I just
thought I’d come in and say hi.”
    David had become inured to Clair finding him
to ‘say hi’ in the little garden courtyard. She always seemed to
know when he was there… but then again, he never knew if she sought
him there when he wasn’t outside, either at work in his
apartment or gallivanting about the town with Johnson.
    He had come to like Clair. An odd, quiet,
shyly introspective girl, she emanated a certain fragility and
loneliness, yet at the same time owned a distinctive core of
strength and soundness. Many times, David had found himself
puzzling over the things she’d said to him, hours later, days
later. Her words were simple, and yet not so simple. She possessed
wisdom, despite a skewed sense of perspective she couldn’t help
because of her age.
    She was an enigma, but a pleasant one.
    “I don’t like him either,” Clair stated.
    David smiled. Typical Clair: an assertion
uttered without the slightest iota of context. “Who?”
    “That man. The detective.”
    “Oh. Him. Did he bother you guys too?” He
cocked his head. “And how would you know if I did or didn’t like
him?”
    “Wasn’t it obvious?” She strode forward and
sat down on the bench facing David. She was wearing shorts today,
and a tee shirt with two large bumblebees on it.
    David