Read Online Hugger Mugger by Robert B. Parker - Free Book Online Page A

County Sheriff’s detective named Felicia Boudreau was on the case. I knew her from eight years earlier, and Becker and I talked with her sitting in her car at the stable site.
    Carolina Moon, she told us, had been a filly of modest promise. Her groom had found her dead in her stall when he went to feed her in the morning. She’d been shot once in the neck with a .22 long bullet, which had punctured her aorta, and the horse had bled to death.
    â€œWe have the bullet,” Felicia said. “Vet took it out of the horse.”
    â€œWe’d like to see if we can match it against ours,” Becker said.
    Felicia said, “Sure.”
    â€œNothing else?” I said.
    â€œWell, it’s nice to see you again,” she said.
    â€œYou too,” I said. “Got any clues?”
    â€œNone.”
    â€œLot of that going around,” I said.
    â€œWhat’s it been, eight years?”
    â€œYep. Still getting your hair done in Batesburg?” I said.
    â€œYes, I am.”
    â€œStill looks great,” I said.
    â€œYes, it does.”
    We talked with Frank Ferguson, who owned the horse. He didn’t have any idea why someone would shoot his horse. I remembered him from the last time I was in Alton, but he didn’t remember me. He had been smoking a meerschaum pipe when I talked with him eight years before. I thought of saying something about it, but decided it would be showing off, especially after my hair-done-in-Batesburg triumph.
    We headed back toward Lamarr in the late afternoon with neither information nor lunch. I didn’t mind about the lunch. The sausage biscuits from breakfast were still sticking to my ribs. In fact, I was considering the possibility that I might never have to eat again.
    â€œThat didn’t help much,” Becker said.
    â€œNo,” I said, “just widened the focus a little.”
    We were heading west now and the afternoon sun was coming straight in at us. Becker put down his sun visor.
    â€œMaybe it was supposed to,” Becker said.
    â€œSo we wouldn’t concentrate entirely on the Clives?” I said.
    Becker shrugged.
    â€œWhat is this, you give me an answer and I try to think up the question?”
    Becker grinned, squinting into the sun.
    â€œLike that game show,” he said. “On TV.”
    â€œSwell,” I said.
    We kept driving straight into the sun. The landscape along the highway was red clay and pines and fields in which nothing much seemed to be growing.
    â€œOkay, let me just expostulate for a while,” I said. “You can nod or not as you wish.”
    â€œExpostulate?” Becker said.
    â€œI’m sleeping with a Harvard grad,” I said.
    â€œThe Emory of the North,” Becker said.
    â€œI have a series of crimes which, excepting only Carolina Moon,” I said, “centers on a family made up of Pud, who’s an alcoholic bully, and SueSue, who’s an alcoholic sexpot, and Cord, who likes young boys, and Stonie, who, according to SueSue, is sexually frustrated. They are mothered by Hippie, who ran off with a guitar player while her daughters were in their teens, and Walter, who after Hippie ran off, consoled himself by bopping everything that would hold still long enough.”
    â€œAnd Penny,” Becker said.
    â€œWho seems to run the business.”
    â€œPretty well too,” Becker said.
    â€œYou know anything about any of these things?” I said.
    â€œHeard Cord might be a chicken wrangler,” Becker said.
    â€œHow about Stonie?”
    Becker shrugged.
    â€œSueSue?”
    Shrug.
    â€œHow about good old Pud?” I said.
    â€œPud’s pretty much drunk from noon on, every day,” Becker said.
    â€œProbably doesn’t make for a good marriage.”
    â€œI ain’t a social worker,” Becker said. “I don’t keep track of everybody’s dick.”
    â€œStill, you knew about Cord.”
    â€œI am a police