Read Online Death in the Pines by Thom Hartmann - Free Book Online Page A

Thought you was a big famous detective. How about you, Tyler? You got out-of-state plates on that Jeep of yours?”
    â€œNo. Bought the vehicle at the dealer in Barre, just outside Montpelier.”
    He snorted. “We get flatlanders comin’ in here, drivin’ up property prices and taxes, and they all think they’re smarter than us Vermonters.”
    â€œAnd you think I’m one?”
    â€œShit.” The show was back on. He turned back toward the TV. “Jeremiah was my friend,” he said.
    I didn’t know where I stood with these two. I said, “I’ll go in a minute. First, though, can you tell me anything about Jeremiah’s grandson?”
    Lucy said, “I know who he is, know him to see. He’s a reporter. He lives in Montpelier.” She giggled and jerked her chins toward Bill. “He don’t like him, ’cause the boy’s a liberal!”
    I raised my eyebrows.
    â€œNo, it’s true,” she said. “He’s always writing about how we ought to save the owls—”
    â€œShit,” Grinder commented.
    â€œâ€”and all that stuff. He wants to make people stop cutting trees on their own land.”
    Bill turned a scowling face to me. “That boy wants the damn government in everybody’s business! Let him have his way, half the damn state’d be unemployed.”
    â€œWhere does he work?”
    Lucy knew: “Writes for
This Week,
little local paper, comes out every Friday.”
    Bill grunted. “He spreads some of his crap around in magazines, too.
Vermont Life
. The
New Englander
. Liberal shit.”
    â€œDid he live with Jeremiah?”
    Lucy didn’t know, but Bill did: “Hell no. That old coot couldn’t stand the boy for more than an hour at a time. No, Jeremiah lives—lived—in a house trailer just north of North-field, but the boy has an apartment in Montpelier.” Bill’s face showed a quiet struggle of emotion, and then he said, “Hell, I don’t wanna give you the wrong impression. They bickered and all, but you know, they was family. The boy, Jerry, he lived with his mom and Jeremiah for about four, five years when she was sick, but after she died Jerry wanted to move out on his own.”
    I stood to leave and hesitated. “Do either of you know a Native American woman named Sylvia?”
    Grinder grunted. “Don’t know any Injuns. Don’t want to.”
    I persisted: “This one’s young, late twenties, early thirties. Straight black hair, long, down to the middle of her back. She wears buckskins and moccasins.”
    â€œNo, don’t know her,” Grinder said tightly. Lucy shook her head.
    â€œLet me borrow your phone book one more time,” I said. Montpelier had a good number of Smiths, including a fair number of J. Smiths. But Jerry had his own listing. I dialed his number on my cell phone and got an answering machine, but I didn’t leave a message. I took out a small pocket notebook and wrote down his number and address.
    On TV the smarmy young mock-psychic had just made a policeman look like a fool. Grinder and Lucy both laughed, he sounding as if he were drowning, she spraying a buckshot pattern of chewed popcorn. Neither of them seemed to mind my leaving.

    It seemed to me I owed Jerry Smith at least a visit and a talk, so I set off north on Route 12, a two-lane highway with a 50 MPH speed limit. It had been the main link between Montpelier and points south before the superhighway came through. I rode the tunnel of my high beams through the night. The road ahead was empty for the eleven miles of forests and fields to the state capital. I pushed the Jeep to sixty, but didn’t dare to go faster than that, not with snow drifting across the road, not with possible black ice in my path.
    It was past ten. Traffic in Montpelier was light, and I found the apartment house with no trouble. I pressed the buzzer under Jerry Smith’s