Ash Wednesday Read Online Free Page B

over her glasses. “A word to the wise.”
    Pooh. The word came from a woman who was jealous! Imagine. Did Phyllis think that life still lay before her? That she might meet someone she might want to marry? What silliness. Natalie had half a mind to tell Eugene what Phyllis had said. But she didn’t. It would have seemed, oh, she didn’t know what it would have seemed.
    The next day there was an excursion to the mall, and Eugene was at the wheel of the center shuttle bus, the kind one saw atairportstaking passengers off to rental car lots. He drove in an almost reckless fashion, laughing while his passengers rocked back and forth as he changed lanes and sped along.
    “Why don’t you sing?” he suggested.
    The whole group burst into “Merrily we roll along,” Eugene’s beautiful tenor voice leading them. In a back seat, bracketed by Leon Bartlett with his chin on his chest and Lester Bernard, whose ears were plugged with the largest hearing aids Natalie had ever seen, Phyllis stared gloomily ahead. It was on that jaunt that Natalie was teased about stealing away Phyllis’s boyfriend.
    Then one day when they were again outside and sitting on a bench, Natalie noticed the man on a bench farther along on the walkway, reading a book.
    “Who is that?” Natalie asked.
    “Nathaniel Green.”
    “Really? He’s some sort of relative of mine.”
    “He is being shunned.”
    “What?”
    “Helen is his sister-in-law. She’s convinced the others that Nathaniel doesn’t belong here.”
    “What right does she have to do that?”
    “He did kill his wife.”
    Natalie almost wanted to deny it. The sight of that lonely man, reading a book, unwanted inside, filled her with pity. “The poor man.”
    “According to Herman, Green doesn’t really mind.”
    “Who is Herman, for heaven’s sake?”
    “Of course you haven’t met Herman. Come, I’ll introduce you.”
    “I’d rather talk to Nathaniel Green.”
    “Later. You must meet Herman first.”

Tuttle heard of Nathaniel Green’s release from Joliet in the newsroom at the courthouse. Tetzel had an annoying habit of reading aloud, although to what audience it would be hard to say. The reporter had been alone when Tuttle came in, holding the printout of the wire service story a foot in front of his face as he read it. He turned to Tuttle.
    “Good work, Tuttle. How long did he serve?”
    When ignorant of the answer, silence is the best response. Tuttle took a chair next to the reporter and reached for the sheet. Tetzel moved it out of reach.
    “You didn’t answer my question,” Tetzel said.
    “Rephrase it.”
    Tetzel’s barking laughter might have been directed at the whole legal profession.
    “How did you spring Greenbeard out of Joliet so soon, Tuttle?”
    Tetzel spoke, if not with forked tongue, in a slurred voice. It was early afternoon, and he was either still sloshed from the night before or getting a head start on today’s sunset. Or both. Tuttle had trouble with crossword puzzles but not with Tetzel’s unimaginative reference to his former client Nathaniel Green.
    “I asked to have him released to your custody, Tetzel.”
    “I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that SOB.”
    “Aren’t you a member of the Hemlock Society?”
    “He didn’t claim that his wife asked him to do it.”
    “No,” Tuttle said. “I did. Let me see that.”
    Tetzel yielded the news story, and Tuttle read it with feigned nonchalance. Nathaniel Green’s release from Joliet was news indeed to his former lawyer. He was not mentioned in the story. Perhaps Tetzel could be induced to correct that omission before it went into the
Fox River Tribune
. He made the suggestion, keeping urgency from his voice.
    “Tuttle, it would only be news if you ever got a client off.”
    “He might have rotted in prison if I hadn’t persuaded Jacuzzi to change the charge to manslaughter.”
    “Careful, careful.”
    Tuttle tipped back his Irish tweed hat, an interrogatory