Read Online Smart House by Kate Wilhelm - Free Book Online

Gary. He’s talking about her motive, and circumstantial evidence, and so on. Enough of us protested that he had to allow for you, or someone like you, to be there also. And that’s why I’m here now.” He took a deep breath.
    Silently Charlie left, returned with two more bottles of beer. Constance poured herself the rest of the tea, and for a long time no one spoke.
    At last Charlie said thoughtfully, “If we go to Spirelli’s we won’t be able to talk because that damn accordion player starts at eight. I say it’s El Gordo’s and margaritas. How about you two?” He added, almost kindly, to Milton, “I have a hell of a lot of questions to ask, I’m afraid.”

Chapter 5

    Late that night Charlie and Constance talked in the cool bedroom, both of them propped up on pillows, the television on, the sound off. Outside the bedroom door, Brutus screamed for admittance. The cats hated it when they closed the door all the way, and with the air conditioner on, they kept it closed.
    “If I let him in, he’ll prowl around five minutes and then yell to get outside again,” Charlie said. “Pretend you don’t hear him. What do you think of Sweetwater?”
    “Awfully slick, and smart. Charming. He looks like Gregory Peck, and, unfortunately, he knows it. Your turn.”
    “He’s a computer nut,” Charlie said as if that defined his entire impression.
    “From what he said, they all are.”
    “I know,” he grumbled. Brutus raised his voice, and Charlie cursed him. For a moment there was silence, then Ashcan screeched, and cats galloped through the hallway. With a sigh Charlie left the bed and went out into the hall. He could hear Constance’s soft chuckle behind him.
    He led the three cats to the sliding glass door to the terrace and shooed them all out, then stood outside for a minute. Lightning played with clouds in the west, too distant for the thunder to reach this far. The air felt heavy, ominous, and too damn hot, he decided. Then thunder rumbled closer, the lightning flashed to the ground, and thunder boomed.
    “All right!” he said, and went back inside to call Constance. Three times that summer they had had electrical storms that had taken out the lights. One of the neighbors, the Mitchum family, had had a television and an electric stove ruined by a power surge.
    They went through the house together pulling plugs and then sat on the terrace waiting for the storm to drive them inside. A fitful wind was rising. The temperature seemed to go up, and the air smelled of ozone. Charlie hoped it would be a good storm, a freshening change of weather, an end to the heat wave that was turning him into jelly day after day.
    “If the house, or the computer in the house, actually did kill two people, don’t you think it might be a dangerous place?” Constance asked between two rolls of thunder. Moving away, she thought with regret.
    “We’ll stay out of elevators and away from the Jacuzzi. Nervous about it?”
    “Not really. It just occurred to me. It also seems that if they were all that disturbed because of a game before, just imagine what they’ll be like this time when they get together. Now they know there’s a killer house, or else a human killer among them.”
    “Damn storm’s going to stay south of us,” he said, disgruntled. “At least it’ll be cool on the Oregon coast.”
    For a moment she had the distinct feeling that he had agreed to look into this insane affair simply to escape the heat wave. She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. If those people were as bothered as she would be in their situation, he might wish he were back here very quickly.
    “Charlie, after talking to Milton, reading the material he gave us, do you think the computer is to blame?”
    “You know, when a guy wants to kill someone, usually he reaches for a weapon he’s familiar with—a gun, a club, a brick, poison, whatever it might be. Or else he grabs what’s at hand, a skillet say, a dandy weapon. Good old