Digging Up the Dead Read Online Free Page B

similarly large checks for the Sanderson Library she planned to build.
    A cool easterly wind had picked up, and only a few people stood about on the outdoor patio, holding cocktail glasses. Two men were arguing loudly while a tall, elderly blonde woman lingered nearby, her narrow face etched into an expression of displeasure. Tosca wondered if they were some of the same people that Arlene said she’d heard arguing in the restaurant.
    As she approached, her heels clicking on the stone walkway, the group turned toward her, suddenly silent. Tosca nodded as she walked by them to the open front door, where she spotted Arlene waiting for her. They greeted each other with a quick, affectionate, one-armed hug.
    “Where’s the hostess? I’ve brought the mead.”
    Arlene took Tosca’s elbow and walked her into the cottage, which was crowded with guests.
    “I’m so glad you came, Tosca,” said Arlene. “Karma’s set up a bar, so you can leave the jug there. I’ll introduce you to her when she’s finished playing.”
    Arlene, dressed in a long black silk gown that hugged her curves too tightly, tilted her head sideways to the back of the room, where the redhead was seated on a high stool, intent on strumming her guitar. Next to her stood a thin young man waving his hands in the air over the card table on which sat a box no larger than a small radio.
    “What on earth is he doing?” whispered Tosca to Arlene. “Is he a magician or a guru performing some kind of eccentric American ritual?”
    Arlene giggled, setting her chipmunk cheeks quivering. “That’s Bill Weinstein. He’s playing Graydon Blair’s theremin. I thought it was an odd instrument too when I first saw Graydon perform with it a couple of years ago. It’s an electronic instrument you don’t need to touch. It works on frequencies, I was told. Makes a really eerie woo-woo sci-fi movie sound, don’t you think?”
    Tosca quietly agreed but thought that the strange contraption, combined with Stravinsky’s despondent piece of music, was an odd choice for a party. Yet it seemed to fit in perfectly with Karma’s hippie home environment. The cluttered, untidy living room with a low, beamed ceiling, small shuttered windows, and drab, olive-green rug added to a general air of gloom. The dreary atmosphere was intensified by dark blue walls covered in huge, unframed black canvasses depicting yellow and orange planets and moons.
    “Those were painted by Karma’s mother, Destiny,” said Arlene. “She was always talking about the Universe and astrology.”
    Beneath the paintings and along two of the walls stretched ramshackle oak bookshelves, their contents jammed together haphazardly in untidy piles. The whole room had an air of carelessness, and Tosca hoped Sanderson’s first editions weren’t treated so cavalierly, if Karma owned any.
    Facing the front window was a dark mahogany desk on which sat a vintage Olivetti typewriter, a briar pipe resting in a black ceramic ashtray, a jar of pencils and a few copies of Sanderson’s books. Next to the typewriter was an open cardboard box containing several pages of what appeared to be a typed manuscript.
    Tosca reflected that the entire room was probably exactly as the author had left it many decades earlier. She took a second look at the pipe, knowing Sanderson never smoked one, and guessed that Karma had added it to copy the items on Raymond Chandler’s writing desk.
    The photo Tosca had seen of Chandler’s desk came to mind. It showed several more items than on Sanderson’s desk, including the movie script of The Blue Dahlia, a box of chessmen and a brass stamp holder. Had Karma set up Sanderson’s desk as a deliberate parody, she wondered, or was it mere hubris? Perhaps she wanted to invoke an image of Sherlock Holmes, whose long-stemmed curved pipe was mentioned often in the Conan Doyle books.
    “I don’t believe we’ve met,” said a tall, pink-haired young woman, holding out her hand. “Charlotte