The Night Bell Read Online Free Page A

going to go over there and get it back. I want to show it to you people anyway.”
    “You don’t think it strange that he didn’t come back?”
    “I thought maybe he had to take it to a lab or something. I mean, it’s not
my
bone! I just found it. I was planting some bulbs out back yesterday morning and my trowel went along something hard and scrapey. I thought it was a stone and I dug it out and it was a
spine
bone. Whatever you call it. I went right away to him, showed it to him. ‘What’s this?’ I said. He said it was probably from a horse, there were farms here with horses and sheeps and cows, but then he didn’t give it back. He locked it in his desk and said he’d look into it. But he’ll do what he does with
all
the complaints in this place: ignore it.”
    “Why didn’t you call the police
first
?”
    “I shoulda! You know, you people should be looking into him and the people he works for. You should nail them for whatever scam they’re working here on us poor old people and young couples. They advertised this place as paradise. It’s not. It’s a cesspool.”
    Hazel drove to the clubhouse, and was taken aback to find that the stretch of Concession Road 6 along the southern end of the development was now named Sam Snead Way. Whoever he was, she doubted he had ever stepped foot in Westmuir County. She drove through a pair of wrought-iron gates and parked behind a two-storey building stuccoed to look like white adobe. The woman in the rentaloffice had no idea that a police officer’s car had been parked since about 1:00 p.m., with no one in it, on Pebble Beach Boulevard. She’d taken one look at Hazel’s cap and her whole face had shut down.
    Hazel showed her badge at the inner gate to the clubhouse itself, and was let through. A path led around the side of the building to a long, porticoed verandah facing the first tee. A sign explained that the clubhouse was modelled on the famous Pinehurst clubhouse in North Carolina, except this one had been built at one-quarter scale. It looked chintzy. Hazel guessed a well-placed spark would burn it down in less than two hours.
    The main concourse was done up in style, with marble floors and chandeliers in the foyer. Young, smiling women were stationed there to hand you a towel to take into the weight room or the indoor pool. She knocked on the door labelled
Corporate Operations
and a man in security uniform answered. “Do you have any ID?” he asked her.
    She showed him her badge. “Do
you
have any ID?” He looked put out, but then produced his security guard’s photo card. “Gaston Bellefeuille,” she said, pronouncing it the French way.
    “Gastin Bellfoil,” he corrected her. “Maybe you’d like to leave a message for Mr. Givens.”
    “Maybe you’d like to be a crossing guard.”
    He let her in and invited her to make herself comfortable in the suite lounge while he told his boss she was there. Hedisappeared into the office with the name B. GIVENS on its door.
    From the lounge there was no view of the undeveloped development, but she’d seen it driving in, as well as the old Dublin Home for Boys, an old, grey, stone nightmare still standing on the corner of Augusta Avenue and Fuzzy Zoeller Way. It was slated to become the northern clubhouse. For a golf course that didn’t sound like it was going to be built.
    After what seemed like an extended wait, the door to Givens’s office opened and Bellefeuille came out. She went in. A man with a pronounced nose and a red, unhappy face rose from a desk and came to greet her. His left knee was braced and he walked on one crutch. “Oh,
god
,” he said. “You people again!” He stabbed the end of the crutch at her. “I said I’m not going to press charges!”
    “I’m Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef. I’m not here about that. Did one of my officers – a Sergeant Sean Macdonald – visit you earlier today?”
    The man retreated to his desk with much effort, huffing and puffing the whole way. He