Read Online Cold and Pure and Very Dead by Joanne Dobson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Joanne Dobson
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lips tightened, turning down at the corners. “That crazy Milly Finch.” A scrawny man next to me shifted uneasily on his stool, then cleared his throat. The waitress glanced at him. He touched the brim of his green Caterpillar gimme cap, then jerked his head backward. Betty Anne’s dun-colored eyes flicked in the direction of the window booth, where the white-haired man now joked with one of the young mothers. Suddenly the counter waitress got busy, hustling the coffeepot back to its burner, then wiping down the counter at its far end.
Strike One
, I thought. My neighbors on either side, the scrawny man and a young freckled guy in a feed store uniform, were strikes two and three. They weren’t even interested in talking about the weather.
I devoted myself to the apple pie—two inches of thick sliced apples in a flaky crust sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, worth a three-and-a-half-hour round trip any day. When I went to pay my bill, a rack of newspapers by the register caught my attention. The
Chatham Courier
headline read LOCAL WOMAN ARRESTED ON HOMICIDE CHARGE . I grabbed the paper and, standing there with the check and a ten-dollar bill tight in my hand, I read the brief article:
According to Chatham police spokespersons, Mrs. Mildred Finch of Nelson Corners is being held in custody in the shooting death of a New York City man at her home yesterday. The victim is Martin Katz of Manhattan. As this issue went to press, no further details were available.
I glanced at the masthead. The
Courier
was a weekly, dated last Saturday. Not much to be learned there. Gossip was still my best bet. But where to find a good reliable gossip monger?
T hat’s where the body was found, right there in the driveway, by the woodpile, next to the porch,” the realtor said. On my way out of Chatham, I’d passed the Country Estates Realty Office, spiffy white and charming behind a picket fence and rows of fresh-faced purple pansies. I’d slammed down my brake pedal, and on the spot invented a software-executive husband, three school-aged kids, and a Frisbee-playing golden retriever, all crammed into a two-bedroom New York City co-op and panting for a spacious, peaceful home in the unspoiled countryside.
I lucked out; Wendy Vandenberg seemed to be thesingle most talkative person in town—maybe the
only
talkative person in town. But then, Wendy wasn’t really local. The realtor had moved to Columbia County from Queens a mere thirty-five years earlier, she said—when property was a steal. And it was the best move she could have made. New Yorkers had been snapping up houses ever since—like they were candy—and prices had skyrocketed. Then she glanced over to where I sat in the passenger seat of her safari-green LandCruiser. “Not that there aren’t plenty of bargains left,” she hastened to add, in a voice that still held outer-borough intonations, “for smart purchasers willing to put a little honest elbow-grease into a charming, untouched country original.”
Untouched country original
, I thought.
Well, okay, but, I’ve always been partial to indoor plumbing
.
“I’m not certain this is
precisely
the area we wish to invest in,” I said, in that superbly informed, all-options-open Manhattan manner that I’d found so grating during the six years I’d lived in the city. “A number of factors will come into play, of course, including tax base, school district, health-care availability.…” The realtor nodded; she’d heard it all before. When push came to shove—or when contract came to mortgage—her clients would purchase with their hearts, not their heads. The green slope of a hill, the rugged texture of a wood-shingled roof, the warm slant of morning sun on old brick, an accidental lilac, and they’d be lost hopelessly in a dream of the one perfect life available in the one perfect, unique—gotta-have-it-at-any-cost—country home.
We were pulled over on Granite Quarry Road, on a low hill overlooking the Finch
Strike One
, I thought. My neighbors on either side, the scrawny man and a young freckled guy in a feed store uniform, were strikes two and three. They weren’t even interested in talking about the weather.
I devoted myself to the apple pie—two inches of thick sliced apples in a flaky crust sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, worth a three-and-a-half-hour round trip any day. When I went to pay my bill, a rack of newspapers by the register caught my attention. The
Chatham Courier
headline read LOCAL WOMAN ARRESTED ON HOMICIDE CHARGE . I grabbed the paper and, standing there with the check and a ten-dollar bill tight in my hand, I read the brief article:
According to Chatham police spokespersons, Mrs. Mildred Finch of Nelson Corners is being held in custody in the shooting death of a New York City man at her home yesterday. The victim is Martin Katz of Manhattan. As this issue went to press, no further details were available.
I glanced at the masthead. The
Courier
was a weekly, dated last Saturday. Not much to be learned there. Gossip was still my best bet. But where to find a good reliable gossip monger?
T hat’s where the body was found, right there in the driveway, by the woodpile, next to the porch,” the realtor said. On my way out of Chatham, I’d passed the Country Estates Realty Office, spiffy white and charming behind a picket fence and rows of fresh-faced purple pansies. I’d slammed down my brake pedal, and on the spot invented a software-executive husband, three school-aged kids, and a Frisbee-playing golden retriever, all crammed into a two-bedroom New York City co-op and panting for a spacious, peaceful home in the unspoiled countryside.
I lucked out; Wendy Vandenberg seemed to be thesingle most talkative person in town—maybe the
only
talkative person in town. But then, Wendy wasn’t really local. The realtor had moved to Columbia County from Queens a mere thirty-five years earlier, she said—when property was a steal. And it was the best move she could have made. New Yorkers had been snapping up houses ever since—like they were candy—and prices had skyrocketed. Then she glanced over to where I sat in the passenger seat of her safari-green LandCruiser. “Not that there aren’t plenty of bargains left,” she hastened to add, in a voice that still held outer-borough intonations, “for smart purchasers willing to put a little honest elbow-grease into a charming, untouched country original.”
Untouched country original
, I thought.
Well, okay, but, I’ve always been partial to indoor plumbing
.
“I’m not certain this is
precisely
the area we wish to invest in,” I said, in that superbly informed, all-options-open Manhattan manner that I’d found so grating during the six years I’d lived in the city. “A number of factors will come into play, of course, including tax base, school district, health-care availability.…” The realtor nodded; she’d heard it all before. When push came to shove—or when contract came to mortgage—her clients would purchase with their hearts, not their heads. The green slope of a hill, the rugged texture of a wood-shingled roof, the warm slant of morning sun on old brick, an accidental lilac, and they’d be lost hopelessly in a dream of the one perfect life available in the one perfect, unique—gotta-have-it-at-any-cost—country home.
We were pulled over on Granite Quarry Road, on a low hill overlooking the Finch
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