Nightshades (Nameless Detective) Read Online Free

panatela that he’d taken from his inside jacket pocket. “With all the bad blood between the Musket Creek citizens and your company, murder’s not out of the question. Or would you say otherwise?”
    “Well . . . the police seemed sure that the fire was accidental. . . .”
    “Still,” I said, pushing him a little, “it could be murder.”
    He clipped off the end of his cigar, put the end and the crumpled cellophane carefully into my wastebasket, and used a thin silver lighter to fire up. He didn’t say anything.
    So I pushed a little more. “You must know those people in Musket Creek. Did any of them hate Munroe Randall enough to want him dead?”
    “They all hated Munroe,” Treacle said with some bitterness. “And Frank and me too.”
    “Are any of them capable of murder, in your opinion?”
    “They’re probably all capable of it. They’re all loonies, you know.”
    “How do you mean that, Mr. Treacle?”
    “Strange people—very strange. Clannish, totally withdrawn from the mainstream of society and totally against progressive thinking of any kind.”
    It sounded like a set speech, the kind to be delivered to lawyers and judges. I said, “I don’t see that that makes them loonies.”
    “Believe me, they are. One of them even threatened me a few weeks ago.”
    “Is that so? Which one?”
    “A man named Robideaux. An artist—a bad artist, judging from the examples of his work I’ve seen.”
    “What were the circumstances of the threat?”
    “I was out inspecting one of our Musket Creek parcels. Robideaux came by and started in with the usual nonsense—”
    “What nonsense is that?”
    “Environmentalist nonsense. Desecration of wilderness land, the evils of free enterprise—that sort of crap.”
    I had nothing to say to that.
    “Well, I ignored him,” Treacle said. “I wasn’t about to be drawn into a pointless argument. That made him even angrier and he said I’d better watch myself around there because someday somebody might decide to shoot at me.”
    “Nobody ever did, I take it.”
    “I haven’t been back since.”
    “Did Robideaux or anyone else from Musket Creek ever threaten Munroe Randall?”
    “Not that I know about.”
    “I understand he had a public argument with a man named Coleclaw. No threats then?”
    “No. It was a shouting match at our attorney’s office; he was taking depositions from Coleclaw and some of the others from out there. Coleclaw called Munroe a liar and a thief, and a few other things, but he didn’t make any threats.”
    “How about Frank O’Daniel? Has he been threatened?”
    “No. He’d have told me.”
    The smoke from Treacle’s cigar was aggravating both my lungs and my sinuses; I used my hand to shred a thick plume of it. I never did like cigars much—or the men who smoke them in somebody else’s office without asking permission. More ammunition for my campaign to dislike Martin Treacle.
    I said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d put that out, Mr. Treacle,” because I’d had enough and I didn’t feel like being tolerant any more.
    “Out?” he said blankly.
    “Your cigar. The smoke is bothering me.”
    He looked at the panatela in a surprised way, looked at me again, and said, “Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize . . .” Then he looked around the office, probably for an ashtray. There wasn’t one in sight. I keep one in my bottom desk drawer, but I decided I didn’t feel like obliging him with it. So I sat there, waiting, and he looked at me again, a little helplessly this time, hesitated, and then got up trailing smoke and went over to the window that looked out on the blank brick wall next door. He tugged at the sash, couldn’t open it, gave me another helpless glance, tugged again, and finally got it to slide up. He threw the cigar out into the airshaft, without looking to see what was down below—not that there was anything flammable down there or I would have said something about it and stopped him. Then he shut the