The Wrong Quarry Read Online Free

toward the building. “It’s a dance studio, as you’ve gathered. Students are junior high and high school girls.”
    “Oh, you’re here to pick up your daughter?”
    “Two of them. One I think has a real chance.”
    “Chance for what?”
    “Mr. Roger is working with both my girls, the younger for Miss Teenage Missouri, the older for Miss Missouri. But it’s my young one who has a real chance.”
    “Beauty pageants, huh?”
    “They’re mostly just called pageants now. You know.” She shrugged shoulders thick with mink. “Times change.”
    “Sure do. They fired Bert Parks, didn’t they? So, did you say Mr. Rogers? Like on TV?” I knew she hadn’t, but I was milking it.
    “No, Mr. Roger. Roger Vale. It’s his studio. He is so gifted. And I don’t care what anybody says. We stand behind him. Look at all these cars.”
    “What do you mean?”
    She waved at the air and her cigarette made white trails. “You know how it is. People always talk. It’s because he’s different. That’s all I’ll say about the matter Oh, there’s Julie and Bobbi!”
    She dropped her cigarette, toed it out, and waved. Out the back of the building’s two rear glass doors, teenage girls in fall and winter coats were emerging, chattering, smiling, laughing. They had a small flight of cement stairs to come down, about a third of what was in front of the building.
    “Nice meeting you,” I said to the mother, though neither of us had exchanged names.
    “You, too,” she said, and beamed.
    Maybe I should have got her name. That desk clerk wasn’t a lock, you know.
    I got in the Pinto.
    Soon I was heading through the intersection of this otherwise residential neighborhood and could see the brown Bonneville parked in the same place. A few daughters were coming down those front steps with parents picking them up on this side. But not many.
    I drove on through and took a left down the other side of the hill, and came around the adjacent block to park on the opposite side of the street, down a ways but with a good view of the Bonneville, its engine off, just another parked vehicle. Me, too. I sat there in the cold, the Pinto’s engine off too, wishing I’d grabbed something to eat, but unlike Mateski, I remained in the front seat. I wanted to be able to take off quickly, if need be.
    Was he shadowing one of these wealthy parents?
    That seemed a good bet. This was a money town, and these were money moms and dads, for the most part.
    For whatever reason—maybe some parents had gone inside to have a word with the dance instructor—it was a good hour before the lights in the big black building went out. All the daughters, all the parents, were long gone by now. I started the car up, drove slowly past the parked Bonneville, and again went around the block, down the hill, and came up around and into the parking lot.
    Only two cars remained on the gravel—a baby-blue Mustang and a red Corvette, parked very near the foot of the small slope behind the building. Not Lincolns or Caddies, but two very choice automobiles, it seemed to me, especially driving a fucking Pinto.
    But no parents or kids were around those vehicles. Everybody was gone. No mink-coat moms, no dads in Cads. Only one light on in the building now, and that had been around front.
    The dance instructor?
    Did he live on the premises, as well? That seemed unlikely but not impossible.
    I again nosed the Pinto out of the lot, turning left, heading down the hill. I turned around in a drive and came up and parked opposite the dance studio’s parking lot entrance. I had barely done this when another car pulled in just ahead of me and parked.
    The Bonneville.
    Shit fuck hell, as the nun said when she hammered her thumb.
    I just sat there with my nine mil in my hand, draped across my lap, wondering if I’d screwed the pooch already. The Bonneville’s driver’s side door opened and the big red-haired red-bearded quilt-jacketed apparition that was Mateski—still in those tinted