Read Online Hunting Season by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Nevada Barr
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Mystery Fiction, Pigeon; Anna (Fictitious character), Women park rangers, Mississippi, Natchez Trace Parkway
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melted something in her wizened old heart and at the word 'dead' tears flooded her eyes and ran down in a zigzag pattern through the time-carved creases in her face.
"Mrs. Barnette, do you mind if we take a look around downstairs, see if we can find out who he was with?" Clintus asked.
Mrs. Barnette gave no indication she heard.
They'd gotten what they were going to out of the old woman. Clintus gave his condolences. Mrs. Barnette did not accept them, though Anna's she acknowledged with a sniff and a nod. When they left she was in her rocker staring straight ahead, tears running down her cheeks, her stony old face as unchanged by the tempest as the stones the rain falls on.
Raymond reluctantly supplied the permission they needed. Anna hoped he'd remain with his grieving mother but no such luck. The undertaker's lanky angulated form followed them downstairs like Edward Gorey's uninvited guest, his dark work suit melting in and out of the shadows on the landings.
Resolutely, she put him from her mind.
"You take Doyce's room," Clintus said, ignoring murmured instructions from their attendant mortician that the investigation could be better served in a myriad of other ways. "I'll see if the living room has anything to offer."
The part of the house Doyce lived in consisted of a spacious living room, a formal dining room, a kitchen and what had once been a library, a perfectly square room with built-in bookcases from the floor to two feet below the ceiling. The bookcases, painted dark green, took up two walls. A fireplace claimed the third and a bay window the fourth.
From the living room, Anna could hear the annoying rattle of Raymond Barnette's advice. Quietly, she closed the library door in the probably vain hope it would keep the man out.
The first order of business was light. Having threaded her way through the clutter to the bay window, she threw open the heavy drapes and was rewarded by a shower of dust. A spider, her web disarranged probably for the first time in generations, ran for cover. She was small and not overly alarming so Anna let her live.
The sheers were opened next. Though Anna did not handle them with undue violence one of them tore, the fabric so old it had become almost as fragile as the spider's web. The window shade was last. Finally, to Anna's relief, there was light.
It had been in her mind to throw wide the casement and let in the rejuvenating air of autumn, but one look at the paint-encrusted sill convinced her it wasn't worth the time and effort. She turned back to the room.
When the library had been forced into use as a bedroom no changes had been made, no closet added, a bed had just been jammed up against one of the built-ins. The books were long gone, and the cases were used to house an eclectic collection of the deceased's belongings.
The bed, a single that looked as if it had survived Doyce's childhood in the 1950s, was unmade. Blankets were tangled in a ball and the bottom sheet had come loose, exposing the mattress ticking. Adolescents were prone to crawling into nests of that sort rather than taking the trouble to make things neat. In an adult it spoke of a disregard or disrespect for one's self.
An unwelcome memory bloomed behind Anna's eyes. After Zach had died there'd come months she'd retired to just such a bed night after night. Usually fully dressed. Often too drunk to care. She shook off the image. It didn't surprise her Doyce lived as he did. From what little she'd seen, she didn't need a degree in psychiatry to know this was a seriously dysfunctional family.
The clothes scattered over the floor and the room's one chair told her little but that Doyce favored sweatpants, T-shirts and camo-patterned army fatigues. She supposed the former to be for at-home lounging and the latter for more formal occasions.
Half a dozen snapshots, unframed but propped up against old sneakers and a half-empty box of rifle shells, showed Doyce in his finery. He and two other men, also in full
"Mrs. Barnette, do you mind if we take a look around downstairs, see if we can find out who he was with?" Clintus asked.
Mrs. Barnette gave no indication she heard.
They'd gotten what they were going to out of the old woman. Clintus gave his condolences. Mrs. Barnette did not accept them, though Anna's she acknowledged with a sniff and a nod. When they left she was in her rocker staring straight ahead, tears running down her cheeks, her stony old face as unchanged by the tempest as the stones the rain falls on.
Raymond reluctantly supplied the permission they needed. Anna hoped he'd remain with his grieving mother but no such luck. The undertaker's lanky angulated form followed them downstairs like Edward Gorey's uninvited guest, his dark work suit melting in and out of the shadows on the landings.
Resolutely, she put him from her mind.
"You take Doyce's room," Clintus said, ignoring murmured instructions from their attendant mortician that the investigation could be better served in a myriad of other ways. "I'll see if the living room has anything to offer."
The part of the house Doyce lived in consisted of a spacious living room, a formal dining room, a kitchen and what had once been a library, a perfectly square room with built-in bookcases from the floor to two feet below the ceiling. The bookcases, painted dark green, took up two walls. A fireplace claimed the third and a bay window the fourth.
From the living room, Anna could hear the annoying rattle of Raymond Barnette's advice. Quietly, she closed the library door in the probably vain hope it would keep the man out.
The first order of business was light. Having threaded her way through the clutter to the bay window, she threw open the heavy drapes and was rewarded by a shower of dust. A spider, her web disarranged probably for the first time in generations, ran for cover. She was small and not overly alarming so Anna let her live.
The sheers were opened next. Though Anna did not handle them with undue violence one of them tore, the fabric so old it had become almost as fragile as the spider's web. The window shade was last. Finally, to Anna's relief, there was light.
It had been in her mind to throw wide the casement and let in the rejuvenating air of autumn, but one look at the paint-encrusted sill convinced her it wasn't worth the time and effort. She turned back to the room.
When the library had been forced into use as a bedroom no changes had been made, no closet added, a bed had just been jammed up against one of the built-ins. The books were long gone, and the cases were used to house an eclectic collection of the deceased's belongings.
The bed, a single that looked as if it had survived Doyce's childhood in the 1950s, was unmade. Blankets were tangled in a ball and the bottom sheet had come loose, exposing the mattress ticking. Adolescents were prone to crawling into nests of that sort rather than taking the trouble to make things neat. In an adult it spoke of a disregard or disrespect for one's self.
An unwelcome memory bloomed behind Anna's eyes. After Zach had died there'd come months she'd retired to just such a bed night after night. Usually fully dressed. Often too drunk to care. She shook off the image. It didn't surprise her Doyce lived as he did. From what little she'd seen, she didn't need a degree in psychiatry to know this was a seriously dysfunctional family.
The clothes scattered over the floor and the room's one chair told her little but that Doyce favored sweatpants, T-shirts and camo-patterned army fatigues. She supposed the former to be for at-home lounging and the latter for more formal occasions.
Half a dozen snapshots, unframed but propped up against old sneakers and a half-empty box of rifle shells, showed Doyce in his finery. He and two other men, also in full
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