Read Online Mallets Aforethought by Sarah Graves - Free Book Online

let them search. Don’t do anything and don’t say anything. Just wait for us.”
    The boys were in the kitchen. Tommy must’ve realized the call was about George and stuck around. From their faces I could tell he and Sam had figured out what was going on and didn’t like it. Tommy in particular looked ready to weep.
    “. . . come with you,” I heard Sam say to him, but he shook Sam off and went out alone, his expression grim.
    Wade pulled his jacket on. “We’ll be there in a minute,” I told Ellie.
    With,
I wanted to add,
our own brickbats.
But by the time we reached George and Ellie’s snug little cottage overlooking the water, the searchers had entered the shed. There they’d found a can of powder. Helpfully marked POISON, its label emblazoned with skull and crossbones, it was immediately taken into evidence.
    “It’s been there for weeks,” Ellie told me shakily. “George got it from Cory Williams, Cory wanted him to use it on the rats. George never really liked the idea but Cory kept at him so George finally got it over with, because Cory pays.”
    And of course George hadn’t felt able to turn down honest work, or to tell Cory Williams how it should be done, either. If Cory wanted it some other way—a way for instance that included not having to buy a new substance—well, he was the customer. So George had used what Cory asked him to use and gotten on with the job.
    Ellie’s fingers laced worriedly together. “George was going to give it back to Cory as soon as they were sure the stuff really got rid of the rats. He didn’t want it around here, not even out in the shed, once the baby came.”
    It had been around, though, and that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst, or so I believed at the time, was when one of the warrant officers asked Ellie where George had been the night before, and she couldn’t tell him.
    “I went up to bed early last night,” she began, controlling her voice with an effort. “He must’ve come in late. I didn’t hear him. He’s at work till eleven or later sometimes,” she added.
    She took a deep breath. “And when I got up this morning he was gone again. Out on another job already.”
    She didn’t know what job. The police had already spoken with Cory Williams and learned that George hadn’t gotten there until around nine. She only knew that in order not to disturb her, he’d spent the night downstairs.
    He must have slept, she told them, on the daybed in the kitchen. He hadn’t made coffee before he left, though, and there had been no pillows or blankets in evidence.
    “He could have gotten his coffee at the convenience store. And George would make his bed, not leave it for me,” she parried.
    But when asked to say for sure that he’d been home at all the previous night, she couldn’t. Whereupon a disbelieving George was put in handcuffs, informed of his rights, and driven away.
    Then
came the worst part.
     

Chapter 3
     
    “Let her talk it out,” said my ex-husband Victor Tiptree. “I don’t want to sedate her and she wouldn’t let me, anyway.”
    I’d called him while the officers were still handcuffing George, and to his credit he’d come over at once. Now he tucked his stethoscope back into his bag, his hands moving precisely as befitted a brilliant brain surgeon, even one who’d given it all up for a remote general practice.
    “And the baby’s all right too?” I asked Victor.
    “Absolutely. No reason it wouldn’t be. Ellie’s vital signs certainly aren’t showing strain. Girl’s got a constitution like a sixteen-year-old.”
    Which was only a bit younger than I was when I had Sam, and I don’t remember feeling sixteen in the days before our son appeared. More like a hundred and sixteen.
    “Changed your mind about the CPR class?” Victor inquired mildly. Trust him to get a zing in, whatever the situation. “Sam says you forgot,” he added. “Maybe on purpose?”
    I swallowed a retort:
The way you forgot you had a wife and baby