Read Online Buried Caesars by Stuart M. Kaminsky - Free Book Online

out of town, Angel Springs, on a case.”
    She stepped back and let me enter. The place was small. I could see beyond the living room to a small bedroom and a kitchen–dining room on the left. Her house in Santa Monica on the beach had five bedrooms, a servant’s quarters and a bathroom that would have held this entire apartment with room left over for a volleyball court.
    I recognized some of the English-style furniture from her old house.
    “Can I sit?” I asked.
    “I don’t think so,” she said with a wary and weary smile, looking at the gold watch on her left wrist. “I don’t think you have it in you. But you may. I’ll have to leave in about ten minutes. I’ve got a job interview with Republic Airlines at four.”
    “You look voluptuous,” I said, sitting on a bowlegged chair.
    “I’m sagging, Toby,” she said, sitting across from me on another bowlegged chair. She didn’t offer me anything to drink.
    “Never,” I said.
    “I’m almost forty-five,” she said, playing with the bracelet on her wrist. “My husband died leaving me nothing and I have to go back to work. I’m a tired woman, Toby. Why don’t you just stop doing this and go chase someone who doesn’t know your underwear size and the way you snore when you don’t sleep on your left side?”
    “How much did you clear for the house?” I asked, ignoring her question.
    Ann crossed her legs and looked down at her nails.
    “Enough to put away a little. We owed a lot on it.”
    “You don’t look tired. You look like a twenty-two-year-old right out of college and ready to enjoy her first apartment and new job,” I said. “You just think you should feel tired and depressed.”
    Ann shrugged, got up and straightened her dress.
    “I need this job, Toby,” she said. “This dress, from J. J. Haggarty’s, complete with peplum, drapes and pleats, cost me $49.95. The shoes, Peacock’s, also from Haggarty, suede pumps, cost $12.95. I need the job to pay for the clothes and I need the clothes to get the job.”
    She adjusted a little green hat, the price of which she hadn’t quoted, checked herself in a mirror near the door and sighed.
    “Ralph wasn’t worth faking it for, Annie,” I said, standing.
    “You didn’t know him,” she said.
    “Well enough,” I answered. “You want to spend an hour in bed? No, forget I asked that. I couldn’t help it. It came over me. You look so …”
    “Voluptuous,” she completed with a grin and a shake of the head. “Toby, the gravy’s in the navy. There are eight women to every man and most of the men still around aren’t carrying their weight. Even at your age you don’t have to chase an ex-wife who knows what your socks will smell like if you take off your shoes.”
    “You always had a way with words, Ann,” I said. “I don’t want war widows and riveters.”
    “I’ve got to go, Toby,” she said, looking at her watch again. “Next time, wait for a formal invitation. It’s not that I’m ungrateful for what you did when Ralph died, but …”
    “One question and I’m gone,” I said as she picked up her purse from a chair near the door.
    “Ask it and go,” she said.
    “You need a ride?”
    “No,” shesaid. “I still have Ralph’s car. Now …”
    “That wasn’t the real question I want to ask,” I jumped in as she opened the door. “Honest answer. Wouldn’t you like to feel our bodies together again?”
    “Honest answer?” she asked, looking at me with shiny brown eyes as big as the dials on an upright Philco radio. “Yes, I would. There were things you were very good at, Tobias. Very good. And it felt good; feels good, to know you want me, but I’m not going to start getting used to you dropping in when you want to, getting to depend on you again, getting disappointed again, shopping for your cereal, listening to your bizarre excuses. You are the oldest twelve-year-old in California. If I wanted children, I would have had them with you.”
    “I guess that means