The Wrong Quarry Read Online Free Page B

in fact. She was petite but curvy, the kind of cheerleader they reserve for the top of the pyramid. From a distance, I couldn’t make her age—she looked like she could have been as young as fourteen—but the way she seemed always on her own, tooling around in that sporty little rod, I figured her for a senior or at least a junior.
    She was also the only indication—other than Vale’s apparent reluctance to leave his castle—that anything funny was going on. Not funny ha ha, but funny business, as in a dance instructor maybe banging one of his teenage charges. I wondered what the legal age of consent was in Missouri. Always good to know.
    Did I mention she had a vanity license plate? Well, she did, and you are going to love this: SALLY . Yes, the dance instructor’s favorite student was Mustang Sally.
    And it was fair to say she was his favorite—she stayed for half an hour to an hour after class, and on two occasions slipped inside after private lessons, staying till ten once, and eleven-something twice. Her parents obviously did not have her on a short leash. More like no leash at all.
    The kicker was Sunday. Mateski had started his stakeout around eleven A.M. , apparently anticipating that our reclusive dance instructor might poke his head out of his cave on what was after all a sunny, less chilly morning, and actually enjoy a day off.
    Vale enjoyed his day off, all right, but like the pizza and Chinese, he took home delivery. Little Mustang Sally showed around noon, at the front entrance, with a big bag of Colonel Sanders in one hand and a plump bag labeled STOCKWELL HOME VIDEO in the other. Chicken breast and movies, right at your door. There’s a franchise worth investing in.
    During that week, nothing much else of import occurred. I remained flirty and friendly with that big-hair blonde desk clerk, when she was on duty, but stayed away off duty. I had come to my senses. No fooling around on the job. Focus, man, focus. That was something smart that I did.
    Something smart that Mateski did was, on the fourth day of surveillance, go and get a haircut. He had the wild red fright wig trimmed to businessman length, got rid of the matching beard, and sported a spare pair of glasses minus the rust-color lenses. Maybe he wasn’t an imbecile. He had effectively become a different person by mid-week—including clothes conservative enough for a Mormon going door to door—and halved the possibility of being spotted.
    I’d have to remember that one.
    Now it was exactly a week since I’d first arrived in Stockwell. Mateski and I were both parked very nearly where we’d been that first night, as a few parents waited with engines running to pick up their girls out front. Suddenly Mateski, who for four hours had been at his post—albeit in several different spots, moving the Bonneville as before—started up his engine and pulled out and appeared to drive away.
    I waited a few beats, then swung out after him. It took not long at all to determine that he was heading to a bar downtown that he liked to frequent—the Golden Spike. It was a shitkicker dive that sat on its own half a block with a big parking lot that was frequently pretty full. Tonight was no exception.
    From across the street where I’d pulled in at a mini-mart, I watched as Mateski left the Bonneville in that lot and headed inside to reward himself, leaving his suit coat in the car and loosening his tie. Miller Time.
    So I drove back to the big black bunker perched on that hilltop like a fortress guarding the surrounding residential neighborhood. Following Mateski to his favorite local watering hole and returning had taken all of seven minutes. I made the sharp turn into the Vale Dance Studio parking lot, where again twenty-some expensive rides were waiting for their dancing daughters.
    Now and then you catch a break, and I caught a good one. Small, but good. That same mink-coat mom was getting out of her Buick Riviera coupe with its vinyl roof to head over