Grave Undertaking Read Online Free Page A

years. She hates it, but loves it when I make her mad.”
    I had to smile. For all his tough talk, Tommy Lee jumped at Patsy’s command.
    We walked across the back lawn to a wire mesh coop built at the edge of the woods. A chorus of coos originated from a wall that could fairly be described as pigeon holed. Birds nested in mailbox-sized compartments and peered out at the falling snow. The square cage was at least twenty feet on each side and ten feet tall. A dividing mesh bisected the enclosure so that brown birds were segregated from those with white and black markings. Tommy Lee’s pigeons numbered more than fifteen, and they all seemed to be speaking their minds.
    He uncapped a large rubber trash can, retrieved a scoop filled with cracked corn and held it aloft so that the birds could see it. Then he tossed the grain through the wire and onto the snow. The pigeons dropped from their cubbyholes like bailing paratroopers. The black and white ones began rapidly pecking up the corn, but the browns thrust out their chests and strutted back and forth between swallows.
    “The black and whites are the tumblers, right?”
    “Yeah, Hanover Tumblers,” said Tommy Lee. “On a clear calm day, I need to have you and Susan come see them. They fly in an upward spiral, and then take a wild acrobatic fall hundreds of feet that would make an F-16 pilot hurl lunch.”
    “Why?”
    “Why does any guy take a tumble? For a dame. Sex.”
    “How do you get them back in the cage?”
    “What’s more important to a guy than sex?”
    “Food?”
    “Right. Barry, what’s so complicated about life? Why don’t women understand us?”
    “Who are these guys?” I asked, pointing to the brown pigeons huffing and puffing on their side of the mesh.
    “They’re the ones who screw it up for the rest of us. German Magpie Pouters. The males bloat themselves up, ruffle their own feathers, and try to intimidate. At least the tumblers actually do something.”
    “Guess they’re like people.”
    “Like a lot of the pompous assholes I lock up, except these guys behave better in their cage.”
    Tommy Lee walked to the side of the coop and opened a screen door. He stepped in with the tumblers and began breaking the thin ice on the water trough.
    “So, you want to talk about birds or people?” he asked.
    The wire mesh between us provided a psychological barrier that kept his question safe, like the screen in a confessional. The distance helped me relax. We were having a conversation while he did some chores.
    “I want to talk about a body.”
    “One that’s at the funeral home?” He stopped fooling with the water trough. I had gotten his attention.
    “No. One that was dug up out of the ground at Eagle Creek Methodist Church. Only it wasn’t the expected resident. The grave had been sublet as a duplex.”
    “In the coffin?”
    “On top of the vault. Appears to be a bullet wound to the skull. The body is nothing but a skeleton and remnants of clothes and cowboy boots. Sheriff Ewbanks came up to investigate.”
    “Hard-ass Hor-ass.” Tommy Lee undid the wall of wire separating the two breeds and stepped in with the pouters. As he cleared their water, several males strutted around his feet as if giving an ultimatum.
    “What kind of sheriff is he?”
    “Good enough, I reckon.” Tommy Lee let a wide grin break through. “Not as good as me, of course. Horace Ewbanks is old school. Been there since the Sixties and pretty much runs things his way. Lets the mountain boys make shine as long as they don’t sell so much he has to do something about it. Doesn’t have much use for Yankees, though he knows their tourist dollars get more important each year. He and I stay out of each other’s way. Worst thing you can do with Horace is tell him how to do his job. You’ll have to give a statement, but after that, you can put it out of your mind.”
    “I wish it were so easy.”
    “Why? Is there something else?”
    “Mobile crime lab found a pistol.