Read Online Cities of the Dead by Linda Barnes - Free Book Online Page A

said it. Was there nothing this reporter fellow wouldn’t stoop to?
    The door opened on a Flowers transformed, a Flowers whose experience of professional photographers must have been bizarre indeed.
    He wore what could have been a flak jacket from an old Army movie, and had so much paraphernalia strung and strapped about his person that he had to slide sideways through the door. A light meter swung from his neck like an oversized medallion. Thirty-five-millimeter film cans hung on his belt like shells on a bandolier. He sported mirrored sunglasses, and he was all brisk cheerfulness.
    â€œWhat kind of shots you have in mind?” he asked Spraggue immediately, nodding a hello at Jeannine Fontenot. “ House Beautiful spread?” He was terse and businesslike, a pro. He was having a great time.
    â€œGet a few shots of each room,” Spraggue said. “I’ll trust your judgment.” Under his breath, he added, “Take your time.”
    As long as Flowers was going to play along with such gusto, he’d see what personal items he could find up in the apartment. He patted his back pocket absent-mindedly and said, “I’ll be down in a minute. I dropped my notebook upstairs.”
    This last was untrue, but Mrs. Fontenot was already engaged with Flowers, discussing camera angles. Spraggue wondered if Flowers could take pictures. He certainly talked a good game.
    Once upstairs, Spraggue wondered how long he could justify searching for a lost notebook. He tucked it under a sofa cushion.
    The brown cardboard boxes stacked in one corner were labeled, but the masking tape stickers told only the room each should be deposited in: SECOND FLOOR LIVING ROOM was all the information they gave. The tape fastening the top box was loose, so Spraggue helped it along.
    Books. Large ones. At first he thought they were all cookbooks, but one, stuck in vertically, had the thickness of a scrapbook.
    A photograph album. An old one judging by the yellowed leaves. Yes. If that were Mrs. Fontenot, it would have to be, oh, twenty years old. He thumbed through the pages quickly. Joe Fontenot liked taking pictures of his wife. He took a decent snapshot. Had she been his wife yet? She had a photogenic smile. Sheet after sheet of Jeannine Fontenot. Then sheet after sheet of the daughter, the little girl in the coffee table photograph, the pictures markedly fuzzier.
    The telephone rang. Spraggue stuck the book back in the cardboard box and resealed the tape. Two rings and it died, answered below in the restaurant. He breathed again.
    Then he started down the hall.
    A kitchen, a bedroom, a bath. Would all Fontenot’s papers still be packed in brown cartons?
    Flowers raised his voice so that Spraggue could hear him from the stairwell. “Well, I’d like to get some more shots of the kitchen, but if you’re sure that’s all …”
    Spraggue turned and fled back to the living room. He flipped the safety catch on a back window open. The shade, after he pulled it down another half inch, hid the lock. Then he knelt in front of the sofa and thrust his hand under the cushion.
    â€œThere,” he said triumphantly, pulling out the notebook, and turning when he heard footsteps on the stairs. “It must have slid down here. You didn’t have to worry about me.”
    Mrs. Fontenot was jumpy. Either the phone call or Flowers had upset her. “No,” she said hurriedly, “it’s not that. It’s just that I didn’t realize the time. I have to ask you to leave now.”
    He held out the tape recorder. “But I still have a few questions.”
    She stared at her wristwatch. “A couple more,” she said.
    â€œYou know they’ve arrested a woman, Dora Levoyer, for your husband’s murder.”
    â€œI was told that.”
    â€œDid the police tell you why they arrested her?”
    â€œTurn that machine off.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œYes, I know what they say,