Gravedigger Read Online Free Page A

must I tell you that? Don’t know, don’t care. I’m nothing to him anymore, nothing to Lyle. They’re nothing to me.”
    He didn’t believe her. He changed the subject. He said, “Was there a woman?”
    Her mouth opened in surprise. Then she laughed. Bleakly. “Sorry. He lied and cheated. But not that way.”
    “Sometimes the wife is the last to know.”
    “I’m not going to tell you how I know,” she said, “but I do know—believe me.”
    “Right. Thank you.” Dave crossed the shiny floor. When he reached for the doorknob, she caught up to him and gripped his arm. “Find Serenity,” she begged again. “I don’t want her to be one of those girls. That letter is old. She wouldn’t stay with that monster. Why would she?”
    “You tell me,” Dave said.
    “Don’t believe Scotty.” She shook her head, frantically. Tears were in her eyes again. “She wasn’t bad. She just couldn’t handle the breakup between Chass and me. That’s all. She’s a good child. Cheerful and bright.”
    “Try not to worry.” Gently Dave pried her fingers from his sleeve. “He was betting on a long shot. There hasn’t been a payoff. I don’t think there ever will be. You keep remembering that.”
    And he stepped out into the cold noon sunshine.

3
    “S O HE’S MISSING,” SALAZAR said. He dealt with homicides for the L.A. county sheriff’s office. Dark-haired, honey-color, handsome, he looked sick today, sallow. His steel desk was heaped with files and photographs and forms. The photographs had ugly subjects, what Dave could see of them. “Does his family want him back?”
    “Nobody’s worried about him but me,” Dave said.
    “Signs of foul play?” Salazar drank coffee that steamed in a styrofoam cup. It burned his beautiful mouth. He breathed a little puff of steam. “Jesus,” he said, and pawed for a cigarette pack among the papers. It was empty and he crumpled it. Dave held out his pack and, when Salazar took a cigarette, lit it for him with a slim steel lighter. He lit a cigarette for himself. Salazar turned in his chair to look out at the cold blue sky. “You have any real reason to think he’s dead inside the house?”
    “He expected money,” Dave said. “Go look and see.”
    “His car there?” Salazar tried the coffee again, cautiously this time, eyeing Dave over the rim. “Did you check the garage?”
    “It’s empty,” Dave said. “The mailbox is full.”
    Down the hall a man began to curse in Spanish.
    “So he went someplace,” Salazar said, “and didn’t come back.” Salazar’s office was one of a row of cubicles that looked through plate glass at a broad room where fluorescent light fell cold on desks where telephones kept ringing, and at some of which men typed, or leaned back in chairs, talking to other men who stood holding papers. Or the men at the desks talked into the insistent phones. They frowned and made notes on pads with pencils or ball-point pens. Now Salazar looked past Dave out into that room. A scuffle was going on out there. The Spanish curses were louder now, and there were shouts from the English-speakers. Furniture slammed. There was a crash. Dave turned to look. Far off across the big room, where everyone was now standing up to watch, two men in neat jackets and short haircuts were struggling with a fat, brown-skinned boy whose hair was long and held by a rolled bandanna. They all three fell to the floor and were hidden from view by desks. Some of the men from the desks headed for the fight. Salazar said to Dave, “I could check to see if he’s turned up dead after an accident. What kind of car was it, do you know?” He reached for his telephone.
    Dave shook his head. “Have you got a phone book that covers that area?” Salazar had the book. Stacked with others on the floor. He crouched for it, slipped it out of the stack, wiped dust off its slumped spine with his hand, laid it in front of Dave. Dave studied him. He was sweating and breathing hard.