Dig Read Online Free Page B

“I guess because he was such a nice man. And I had so many good memories of him. And to tell you the truth, I was curious to see who else might show up.”
    My use of the word
curious
made him wince, as if he’d just swallowed one of those bitter little gnats that buzz around over-ripe bananas. “You’re not going to involve yourself, are you Mrs. Sprowls?”
    “Involve myself?”
    “You did a great job with the Buddy Wing thing. We never would have found the real murderer without you. We’re very grateful. But that little snoopfest of yours was just a one-time deal, right?”
    “Well, of course it was a one-time deal.”
    My assurance resuscitated his appetite. “That’s good to hear,” he said through a mouthful of slippery potatoes. “Because this case may have to be on hold for a while. And I don’t want you out there causing trouble. For me or yourself.”
    “Heavens to Betsy, don’t worry about that—what do you mean on hold for a while?”
    “Not exactly on hold. But we only have so many detectives. And only so much time. And we’re up to our boxers in this Zuduski thing.”
    He was talking, of course, about the murder of Paul Zuduski, younger brother of Congresswoman Betty Zuduski-Lowell. He’d been missing for six weeks when his badly decomposed body was found in an abandoned factory on the south side. He’d been shot several times and duct-taped inside a Persian rug. He’d worked in his sister’s Hannawa office, helping solve the everyday problems of her constituents.
    “The good congresswoman is putting tremendous pressure on the mayor,” Grant said. “And pressure on the mayor means pressure on the chief. Which means pressure on yours truly. But don’t worry, Mrs. Sprowls, we’ll get the sonofabitch who killed your friend sooner or later.”
    ***
     
    Of course I wasn’t going to involve myself. No matter how many unanswered questions were eating away at me. No matter how upset I was that Detective Grant was putting Gordon’s murder on the backburner while he figured out who killed the congresswoman’s little brother.
    Of course if I remembered something that might be important, I’d share that with the police. And if, as the head librarian of
The Hannawa Herald-Union,
I came across something interesting in my files, why, yes, I’d certainly pass that along. But involve myself? No way in hell was I going to involve myself.

Chapter 4
     
    Saturday, March 17
    I knew right where to find Eric Chen—in the cafe at the Borders bookstore in Hannawa Falls. Eric spends every Saturday and Sunday there, from the minute the store opens until the manager sweeps him out at closing time, playing chess with the city’s other dust-collecting geniuses. They’re quite a bunch, I’ll tell you. I suppose there are fifteen or twenty of them. Ethnically they’re a real box of Crayolas: Whites, Blacks, Asians, Latinos, Iranians, just about one of everything. And almost all of them have an advanced degree in some difficult subject. They gather around the little tables like starved squirrels around a walnut tree. They play game after game after game. Fast, noisy games. They chatter and groan and slap their foreheads. They bang their chess pieces down and pound their timers. They giggle in Farsi and screech
Shit!
in Chinese.
    Eric was sitting right in the middle of this mayhem, locked in battle with some unshaven old fart in a bowling shirt. I sat at an empty table and waited for him to notice me. When he did, I wiggled my fingers at him. He gave me the international finger signal for “just a minute.” He played—and lost—three more games before joining me. “You know,” I said, “if you and your little friends stopped wasting your brains on that worthless game, you could have half of the world’s problems solved in about five minutes.”
    Eric was cradling a big, half-empty bottle of Mountain Dew in his arms. “Is there a compliment in there somewhere?”
    “Actually, no.”
    “Good,” he