Murder in Focus Read Online Free

and repeated his witticism softly. “Pissing on trilliums.” The voice paused as if its owner had suddenly realized some dreadful truth. “Hey, Doreen. We’re dry here. Bring us another beer, eh?”
    â€œLook, Don, we gotta get going. It’s getting late. You mind riding in the back? Joe’s knee is real—” This was a new voice, reasonable and sober-sounding.
    â€œI’m not riding in the fucking back of no truck all the way to Smiths Falls. You crazy or something? In with all that equipment and garbage in there? You tell MacDougall to go screw himself. I’m not . . .” His voice faded away as he tried to remember just where he was in his protestation.
    â€œI’m driving up to Carleton Place,” said the helpful voice. “I can drop, uh, Don off in Smiths Falls on the way. But you people sure do go a long way to eat lunch. It must be forty miles.”
    â€œWe didn’t come here just to eat lunch,” said the new voice seriously. “We had to pick up some equipment in Brockville, and get Joe. He was seeing the doctor.”
    â€œBesides, we’re not going to—” Another voice, deep and hesitant, inserted itself into the discussion.
    The sober voice sliced through authoritatively. “Anyway, thanks for the offer of a lift,” he said, “but we don’t like to put you out.”
    â€œNo trouble. I like company when I drive. You ready, Don? You’ll have to tell me where to go. This really isn’t my country around here.” Something about the voice irritated Sanders. It was too smooth; its lapses into the local dialect were too mannered and isolated. Slimy urban bastard trying to be one of the boys. He swiveled around in his chair to watch them leave.
    From where he was sitting, he could see only backs, and they all looked pretty much the same to him. Before they got out of the room, however, one of the last two lurched and crashed into a chair, grabbed the elbow of the man beside him, and then turned around to go back to the littered table they had just left. He was a big, dirty-looking man, deeply tanned, with lank black hair, thick black brows over bright blue eyes, and a gaunt rawboned face. His eyes swept rapidly and sharply over Sanders, as if he were memorizing him for some future contingency, and then he looked, puzzled, down at his old table. He shook his head. Whatever he had forgotten would remain forgotten, and he walked unsteadily back toward the door. His companion stood in the doorway and watched the pantomime. He, too, was a tall man—almost as tall as Sanders himself—and wore his workmen’s coveralls as though they had been designed by an Italian couturier. His face was arrogant and almost handsome, thin, with high cheekbones, deep-set intensely dark eyes, and a full mouth. The symmetry of his thick and arched eyebrows was spoiled by a thin white scar that ripped through his tanned face from eyelid to temple. Handsome, except for that, but not pleasant looking. As the two men started walking again, a fading but familiar whine drifted back to Sanders from the scruffy one.
    â€œJust a minute, you guys. I gotta go to the can.” So that had been Don.
    Scarface stopped and allowed Don to get ahead of him before turning back toward the bar. He looked around, apparently for the waitress, then reached over and picked up the receiver of a telephone hanging in the darkness against the back wall. Whatever he had to communicate was quickly said, and he was back out in the hall long before Don could have emerged from the washroom.
    Sanders turned back to his food. The sudden silence in the room was overpowering. The waitress, still frowning nervously, emerged from the kitchen and drifted by to refill his coffee cup. When he admitted he didn’t want anything else, she dropped his bill on the table and disappeared.
    Just as he was biting into the third quarter of his sandwich, a piercing whistle