Read Online At Ease with the Dead by Walter Satterthwait - Free Book Online

the burglar had killed him.”
    I frowned. “He was still wearing the clothes he’d worn the day before, you said. And he was hit from behind.”
    Smiling faintly, she nodded. “It wasn’t a theory into which a great deal of thought had been put. I’ve always felt that a burglar was most unlikely. But really, you know, the police had nothing else to go on. There’d been a phone call that night, around ten-thirty—both my mother and I had heard the phone ringing. It stopped after two rings, so presumably my father answered it. But whoever made the call never came forward.”
    â€œWhat was the weapon? What had your father been hit with?”
    â€œThe police never determined. A blunt object, they said. Whatever it was, it was never found.”
    â€œCould it have been part of the skeleton?” A macabre thought, but maybe possible.
    She thought for a moment, considering this, and then shook her head. “I shouldn’t think so. The bones were all quite fragile.”
    So someone had gone there with a weapon, or with something that could be used as one, and taken it away with him. I asked her, “You didn’t hear anything else that night?”
    â€œNo. I fell asleep while he was downstairs. And I was a sound sleeper even then.”
    â€œWas anything taken beside the remains?”
    â€œMy father’s wallet. Some pottery and some jewelry that he’d found buried with the man.”
    â€œWould it’ve required much strength to carry the remains off?”
    â€œNo. I could’ve done it myself. The skeleton, as I say, was fragile. It didn’t weigh much and some of the bones had become disjointed. They were all in a cardboard box perhaps two feet wide by three feet long. Perhaps a foot high.”
    â€œYour father kept the box in his study?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWas anything ever found? The pottery? Your father’s wallet?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œThe police ever make an arrest?”
    â€œNo. So far as I know, the case is still technically open.”
    Which, since the records were missing, meant nothing. I asked, “Did you ever have any suspicions, yourself, as to who might’ve been responsible?”
    â€œNot initially,” she said, and sipped at her sherry. “Later, however, I became quite certain that my mother had killed him.”

6
    I asked her, “What made you think that?”
    â€œMy father was having an affair and my mother found out about it.”
    â€œWith whom was he having the affair?”
    Alice Wright smiled and asked me, “Are all private detectives so careful with their pronouns and infinitives?”
    â€œIt’s part of the code,” I said. “Like putting notches on our guns.”
    She laughed and then she shook her head. “I never knew her name. But I believe she was an Indian woman. I know that he saw her on the Navajo Reservation, whenever he went on one of the field trips with his geology students.”
    If this were true, it would explain what had brought Lessing back, again and again, to the same small area in northeast Arizona. “How do you know?” I asked her.
    â€œI found a letter she’d written to him. Hidden in one of his books, in the study. This was a year or two after he’d died. The woman who’d written it was very nearly illiterate, but there was no mistaking the sincerity of her feelings. Nor their nature. And from what she said, their relationship had been going on for some time.”
    Across the room, Lisa Wright sat impassively. If she was surprised to learn that her great-grandfather was an adulterer, and her great-grandmother a possible murderer, she didn’t show it. Maybe she’d already known. Maybe they were separated from her by so much time that they were curios rather than people. Whatever her thoughts were, she kept them buried below the smooth untroubled surface of her beautiful face.
    I asked