Read Online Service Dress Blues by Michael Bowen - Free Book Online Page A

A snow shovel leaned in the corner where the deck met the angle of the house.
    â€œWhat was the fight about?” he asked abruptly.
    â€œAt the bar? Of course at the bar. What other fight would you be asking about?”
    Kuchinski waited. He figured the question had taken Lena by surprise, and he sensed that she was stalling.
    â€œOh, you know,” she said then. “Couples just get on each other’s nerves sometimes, especially in winter. Some little irritation, you start snapping at each other, someone says the wrong thing and all of a sudden your ears are ringing and your cheek smarts.”
    Kuchinski nodded. Looking discreetly at Lena, he worked his hands through a couple of furled flags, found the handle for the sliding door, and pulled the door open. This knocked two of the flags over. Their staffs made a muffled, hollow sound as they hit the floor. Hollow and not very loud. Lena didn’t exactly jump out of her skin—and she was standing only ten feet off, not half-a-house away from the noise. He bent down to pick up the fallen colors.
    â€œAnything broken in here?” he asked.
    â€œNot that we found.”
    â€œAnything missing?”
    â€œOle says no. He knows the room better than I do. I haven’t missed anything from the rest of the house.”
    Again Kuchinski nodded. He walked deliberately toward the middle of the room.
    â€œYou know,” he said, “there’s a speech they teach lawyers to give to their clients in criminal cases. Real macho thing. Something along the lines of, ‘Lie to your wife, if you want to. Lie to your girlfriend and your boss and your parole officer. But don’t lie to me, because right now I am the only friend you have.’”
    Lena looked at him levelly for a couple of seconds, cool appraisal deepening her eyes.
    â€œBoy, you are a real lawyer, aren’t you?”
    â€œWhat was the fight about?”
    â€œOkay, you win,” Lena said after another two-second pause. “It was about Harald.”
    â€œYour nephew at Annapolis?”
    â€œRight. Ole was talking about how great that uniform would look in campaign photographs. I told him to just leave Harald out of the political stuff—that he had enough on his mind trying to survive plebe year without being shoe-horned into some photo-op as stage dressing. I got a little sharper than I maybe should have, I guess, and touched a nerve, so Ole got up to go away mad. I stood up and grabbed him to keep him from going. He took that the wrong way and pushed me back into my seat.”
    â€œPushed you or belted you?”
    â€œI can see where it might have looked like a little clop across the chops to someone a few feet away. It wasn’t all that big a deal. Believe me, I got much worse from my mother for lipping off when I was a kid.”
    â€œOkay. I’ll want to have someone take pictures of the living room and this room. Plus I’ll need to get a detailed floor plan drawn up for the first floor.”
    â€œI don’t know about the floor plan, but one of Gary Carlsen’s Laurels does professional photographic work for him. She might give us a rate—and pennies count.”
    â€œI’ll look into it. Will Ole be around this morning? I’d like to chat with him, too—face to face, and just the two of us.”
    â€œHe won’t be around here this morning, but if you hustle back to Milwaukee you might be able to catch him there. He’s down there talking with Carlsen and your buddy Rep.” She looked again at her watch. “I’ll call him and tell him to hang around so he can buy you a late lunch, if you like.”
    â€œRight,” Kuchinski said. “Pennies count.”

Chapter 7
    Ole Lindstrom had just finished telling Gary Carlsen to “turn that damn thing off” when Lena’s call came through. While Ole punched his cellphone and muttered into it, Carlsen obediently leaned back in his desk