Read Online Atticus by Ron Hansen - Free Book Online Page B

over the stove. Atticus opened a side cupboard and found it jammed with bottles of spice and vitamins and a plastic bag of chopped green weed, presumably marijuana. Atticus sighed and put a slice of Wonder bread in the toaster. Wires in the toaster glowed orange as he looked out through the sink window’s wooden louvers to an old red Volkswagen that hadn’t been there yesterday. Sketch pads and paints and rolled-up canvases overheaped the seats. His toast popped up and he spooned on jam, thinking, You’ll have to get an inventory. His coffee boiled and he turned off the gas burner. He refilled his cup and sipped from it as he wandered into the dining room. A shotgun shell of a brass lipstick case was standing upright on the sideboard. Hadn’t been there before. Mayans probably found it on the floor when they cleaned up. Atticus took off the top and saw that its blood-red tip was crumbled, and then he saw a faint trace of red on the dining room mirror he was facing.
    A freshly showered Renata skipped down the steps in her pink kimono, her hair tangling wetly at her collar.“Aren’t those pajamas smart,” she said, and slipped past him to get four oranges out of the string bag in the kitchen and a paring knife out of a wooden block by the stove.
    â€œI was fishing for compliments,” Atticus said.
    â€œSleep well?” she asked, but sought no answer. Sleeplessness welted her own eyes, and she seemed petulant and irritated. She halved the oranges and placed them in a juicer, then pulled the juicer’s handle down harder than the oranges demanded.
    She wiped a juice glass against the pink silk. “How about some o.j.?”
    â€œHad some.”
    Renata drank juice from her glass and slapped the paring knife into the wooden block. “Weird day,” she said. Her voice harbored the hushed abrasion of a shoe on carpet.
    His hand wiped a trickle from the hot-water faucet handle. Bad washer. “Looked upstairs for his wallet,” he said. “Expect the police have it still.”
    â€œDon’t know.”
    â€œI found this lipstick.”
    She looked at it. “Oh, thanks.” She put it in her kimono pocket.
    â€œWasn’t my color.”
    She faintly smiled. “You’re more a Spring, aren’t you.”
    â€œWell, I try to be.”
    Silence hung in the air between them like cigarette smoke.
    Atticus finally asked, “Was there a break-in here? Door there looked jimmied open.”
    She fell into thought and then she offered, “Either that or he lost his keys. Drunks do lose things.”
    â€œWas he that way often?”
    She lifted her glass. “Maybe just around me.”
    â€œAnd why’s that?”
    She finished her orange juice before saying, “I hate this.”
    â€œHate what?”
    She put her hands flat on the kitchen countertop and paused as if rehearsing what she was about to say. But the front door opened and a high male voice called, “¡Hola!” Renata informed Atticus secretly, as if cheating, “Stuart,” and then called back, “In the kitchen!”
    Stuart Chandler was a tall, fashionable Englishman of Atticus’s age, with a full head of white hair he’d sleeked back with gel, skin that was a mahogany brown, and shrewd, impatient, hazel green eyes. Dressed in a fine black blazer but pleated white trousers and white docksiders, he seemed a yachtsman, and he sauntered into the kitchen as if he wanted to talk to the chef, first smiling at Renata, then firmly shaking Atticus’s hand and offering his name in the way of a famous man often introduced. Stuart said, “I only wish we could be meeting in happier circumstances, Mr. Cody. I have three grown sons of my own, so I think I can fathom the feelings you must have now. You do have my deepest sympathy.”
    â€œAppreciate it,” he said.
    â€œAre you coping?”
    â€œOh yeah.” Atticus filled his cup. “How