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

shattered.”
    I nodded. “And so during the night, you think, your mother went back downstairs and killed him. And took the stuff from the study to make the death look like a burglary.”
    â€œYes. She knew how to drive, and in the middle of the night no one would’ve seen her leave. She could’ve easily gone down to the river and tossed everything in.”
    â€œBut why take a boxful of bones?”
    â€œPerhaps she wasn’t thinking clearly. Or perhaps she just wanted to get them out of the house. I know she hated having them around.”
    â€œBut with your father dead she could’ve gotten rid of them any time she wanted.”
    She shrugged lightly. “As I say, perhaps she wasn’t thinking clearly.”
    â€œIf she killed him, what did she use for a weapon?”
    â€œI don’t know. An old candlestick, perhaps. A hammer. The police had only her word for it that nothing of that sort was missing from the house.”
    â€œDid you tell them any of this?”
    She shook her head. “My mother’s lawyer kept them pretty much away from me.” She smiled. “For my own sake, of course.”
    â€œThey searched the house?”
    â€œYes. And the grounds. And so did I. Frequently, over a long period of time. Whenever my mother was out.”
    I had a sudden sad vision of a young girl, as the years passed around her, slowly searching through a silent house for bits of pottery, splinters of bone, a dead man’s missing wallet: something, anything, that might be prove her mother a murderer.
    What would she have done had she found it?
    Alice Wright misread my reverie, and smiled more softly than she had before. “You’d rather she wasn’t the one responsible, wouldn’t you?”
    I nodded. “Yeah.”
    â€œI’m sorry to say so, Joshua, both for your sake and for Mr. Begay’s, but I think those remains are somewhere at the bottom of the Rio Grande. I don’t think you’re ever going to find them.”
    â€œDid your mother ever remarry?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNo boyfriends, no male companions?”
    â€œNo.” She smiled. “She was one of those women who come into their own with widowhood.”
    â€œHi. This is your dreamboat speaking.”
    â€œWilbur?”
    â€œRita, Rita, Rita. Here I am, all by myself in a empty motel room, a stranger in a strange land. And all you can do is make jokes and play bumper cars with my heart.”
    â€œWhy alone? Why aren’t you and Grober out hitting the boites of El Paso? I’m sure he knows all the elegant night spots.”
    â€œI haven’t talked to Grober yet. But I spent part of this afternoon with Alice Wright. She’s Dennis Lessing’s daughter.”
    â€œI know. The computer gave me that, off the database. She was an anthropologist. Apparently a very good one. Studied with Ruth Benedict at Columbia.”
    â€œIf you’ve got a computer to give you all this good stuff, what do you need me for?”
    â€œI’m not entirely sure. Banter?”
    â€œWhat else did the computer have to say?”
    â€œWhy don’t you tell me what you’ve got first.”
    I told her what I’d learned from Alice Wright about her father and mother.
    â€œShe’s right, Joshua,” Rita said. “If her mother did it, you’re never going to find the remains.”
    â€œBut maybe her mother didn’t do it. We’re talking about things that were seen through the eyes of an eleven-year-old girl and then filtered through an awful lot of time.”
    â€œShe was trained as a professional observer, Joshua.”
    â€œNot when she was a kid.”
    â€œYou’re going to assume she’s wrong then.”
    â€œWouldn’t you?”
    A pause. “For the time being, I suppose. If you assume she’s right, there isn’t much point in your staying down there.”
    â€œWay I figured