Scare Tactics Read Online Free Page B

tightened.
    “Why?”
    “It’s been two years,” she replied, looking straight ahead. “We owe David a visit, don’t you think?”
    I realized then why she’d asked me over the telephone if I knew what day it was. February 24. The day David Hallowell died.
    “Is that necessary?”
    She looked at me, two seconds, her expression neutral. “Yes.”
    I could have refused. In traffic it would take more than three hours to drive to San Augustin. But the long drive would give me my chance to find out everything I wanted to know about Dierdre; the full story of her relationship with David Hallowell. It was even possible that—for her sake—I could persuade her not to take any action against me.
    And if I couldn’t—
    Unfortunately she was not talkative on the trip up the Pacific Coast Highway. She answered questions sparingly or not at all. She seemed to be under a strain, not the assured, tantalizing amateur blackmailer I had met three nights ago. Finally I gave up trying to talk to Dierdre, willing to wait her out. Without harming my perceptions the odor of violets had a beneficial, lulling effect on me. I drove north with the confidence that the situation ultimately would be resolved in my favor.
    The fog was rolling in as we reached San Augustin. The cemetery in which David Hallowell was buried lay on the slope of a hill only two hundred yards from the sea. With the fog lights on I crept up the winding access road past drab and dimly seen monuments to small deeds and inconsequential passions. The fuming fog cut visibility to less than ten feet. I had forgotten where he was interred. Dierdre seemed to know exactly, as if she had made many visits, after dark.
    “To the left up ahead. There’s a stand of oak trees and a crypt with a plinth. He’s just down the path from there, near a wall that’s parallel to the cliff.”
    “Now I remember,” I said, my sense of well-being wearing a little thin. I wondered, for the first time, if Dierdre was in on this alone; if she was, then what was her real purpose in bringing me to a wayside cemetery under cover of the winter fog? The situation I had felt to be within my control was now unappealing.
    Nevertheless, I stopped the small car by the trees, leaving the fog lights on. Dierdre got out immediately. The leafless branches dripped moisture onto the canvas cover. I heard the swish and boom of surf across the highway below. There was a flashlight in the glove compartment. Before getting out from behind the wheel I reached down and released the pistol from its hiding place, slipping it into my jacket pocket as I closed the door behind me.
    I didn’t know what lay ahead, in the fog; but Dierdre looked back at me impatiently, waiting. Not as if she had devastating mischief in mind. Her blue eyes were wide and unwinking, like eyes in a portrait.
    “This way.” She led me to David’s plot along a narrow path of stepping-stones, her essence—as she called it—sweetening the dismal, dripping air. I cast the flashlight beam on the little bronze marker, flush with the ground, that I had purchased. The sight of it brought back memories but prompted no remorse, if that’s what she expected. If not for me, Angels and Aborigines probably wouldn’t have been finished. And in what anonymous grave, crowded close to unwanted and unremarked men, would he now be lying? I was tired of indulging her fantasies of revenge, whatever they might be.
    “What do you want, Dierdre?”
    She looked up slowly from contemplation of the grave.
    “I was hoping,” she said quietly, “by now you would know what you must do.”
    “For a start, I want those pages you told me about. The earlier draft. Name your price.”
    She frowned, then opened her purse. I tightened my grip on the pistol in my pocket. But all she brought out was another bundle of the familiar yellow pages.
    “I have them here.”
    “Just drop them on the ground.” She did so. “There are no more pages