Read Online Hungry Ghosts by Susan Dunlap - Free Book Online

focus would appear to be on his bowl of stew, but he’d be noting John’s every move. “Well, the poison ought to be easy. If your vic swallowed it and dived off the landing, the bottle can’t have gone far.”
    â€œGone when we got there. It’s not a high-honesty building. Neighbors had hours to boost anything Norris McMahon, that’s the vic, didn’t crush in the fall. By the time they got around to notifying us, the guy was stiff. Picture it: the vic’s lying at the bottom of the stairs for eight, twelve, twenty-four hours, with all of them stepping around him like he was a pile of shit.”
    â€œSo what did make them call?” Gary asked.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œWhy then?”
    John had a way of inhaling like he was dragging mud through a grate. “They said—wait’ll you hear this—they said he fell, just then. Whole bunch of them in on that one. Like the guy got rigor on the way down.” He let out a huge, world-weary sigh. “And they thought we’d believe it!”
    â€œBut if there was a poison—” This from my sister.
    â€œYou’re missing the point, Gracie! It’s not that the vic finds a bottle of lye or who knows what and pops it down—the coroner’ll find out sooner or later; it’s hardly high-priority—the point is that the neighbors can’t bebothered to report a dead body lying by their front door.” John let out another great, oldest son sigh. “Forget I mentioned it; you’ll never hear about this guy again.”
    It all seemed so normal, as if Tia Dru had never heard of my cable car stunt and never tried it. I wondered if they even knew about Tia.
    WEDNESDAY
    I barely made it into the zendo before Leo rang the bell at 6:40 A.M . The only other person there was a fellow sagging into his chair like he’d found a good place to keep warm until Renzo’s opened. He looked as sleepy as I was.
    They say that one of the reasons for sitting in full lotus position—legs crossed, right foot on left thigh, left foot on right—was so the monks could fall asleep and not topple over. I pulled my legs into position, placed my hand in a mudra —left on right, thumb tips barely touching.
    My eyes closed; reality slipped away. I was back with Jeffrey Hagstrom listening to him saying he didn’t believe Tia when she insisted she didn’t know who had chased her. That jolted me awake. I inhaled deeply, hoping the breath would keep me conscious.
    But my eyes closed again. I was Tia leaping for the cable car and missing. I snapped awake, inhaled, and focused on my breath till my dream-panic settled.
    My eyes closed yet again. I was the homeless victim falling dead over the railing. I bolted awake. After that I wished for sleep, and sat with new waves of guilt. The period lasted an eternity. The guy across from me must have been as relieved as I when the final bell rang. He was out the door before I finished fluffing my cushion.
    I blew out the candle, trimmed the wax, stirred and tamped down theash in the incense bowl. Straightening the mats took only seconds. I took a last look at the too-good-to-be-true zendo and headed upstairs toward the room I had yet to move into.
    Leo was crossing the upstairs landing. He’d changed to jeans, black sweatshirt, and a watch cap. “Busted! I’ve got a coffee date.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been back in the city how long? You don’t waste any time.”
    He laughed but didn’t respond to my tacit query. “There was something else you were going to ask me, right?”
    I hadn’t planned to mention it, didn’t want to at this hour, didn’t know where to begin. I swallowed and leaned back against the door to my room and wished I could sink through. “Leo—Roshi—you remember the stunt I was telling you about yesterday, the cable car leap?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œAnd you asked, and