Read Online To the Manor Dead by Sebastian Stuart - Free Book Online

roaring stop in Zack’s drive. I steeled myself as the driver’s door flew open and a giant burst out.
    “The Moooose is looooose!” he bellowed, before galumphing across the lawn and chest-butting with Zack.
    “Dude!”
    “Fucker!”
    “Freak!”
    “Loser!”
    Male bonding is so erudite.
    The giant turned to me. “And there’s the Janster! How’s it goin’, hip sister?”
    Moose LaRue was Zack’s best friend—a rowdy, six-foot-six fellow landscaper who could “lift a tree ball with a single arm.”
    “I’m okay, how are you, Moose?”
    “The Moose be groovin’! Hey listen—cool news! I bought a boat!”
    “No shit,” Zack said.
    “Yeah, so we can go out drinkin’—I mean fishin’—on the river.”
    The two of them roared some more.
    “Hey listen, Moose, Zack was telling me you take care of Vince Hammer’s place,” I said.
    “Yeah. The man is a solid-gold superfreak.”
    “You’ve met him?”
    “Hell, yeah. He’s one of these rich assholes who has to prove how down-home he is by making nice with his slaves. He’s a total dick. Speaking of dick, he can’t keep it in his pants. It used to be like the Playboy mansion around there.”
    “Say more.”
    “There was a different babe on his arm every time I saw him. Sometimes one on each arm. Cat liked to party. One day I was there doing cleanup and this chick comes out of the house starkers—the bod, Zack man, the bod. She says she wants to take a swim, then she asks me my name. When I tell her, she says ‘is it true what they say about moose?’ Pretty soon we’re in the pool together and she’s practicing her underwater humming skills.” The boys roared yet again. “Hey, is that a Zackwacker?”
    Zack handed him the drink and he downed it in one long swallow.
    “But lately there’s been just one lady there. Marcella Sedgwick. She is fierce. Fuckin’ knockout. High-class bitch won’t give me the time of day. She’s cleaned the place up, a lot less partying. I think they’re getting serious. So, amigo, want to go out on the river this weekend?”
    “Hell, yes.”
    “Moose, if River Landing gets built, is your company going to do the landscaping?” I asked.
    “We’ll do the real work, Hammer hired some fancy-ass Italian company to design the ’scape. He walked my boss and a couple of us grunts around the place, wants it to be a ‘work of art’. Give me a fucking break—take away a few bells and whistles and you’ve got another cheesy townhouse development. I’ll tell you another thing—the man is fucking obsessed with that property across the river.”
    “Westward Farm?”
    “Bingo. He kept pointing it out, was practically salivating, called it ‘the crown jewel of the Hudson’.”
    “You want to stay for dinner, Moose?” Zack asked, pulling up a head of red lettuce.
    “Not if you’re serving rabbit food. Naw, I gotta split. See you Saturday.”
    He galumphed back to his truck and roared away.
    “I hope you’re hungry,” Zack said as we headed into the cabin.
    “Starving.”
    He slipped in a Phish CD, put a pot of water on the stove, and started to chop vegetables.
    “Speaking of obsession,” I said, “I’m getting obsessed with Daphne’s death.”
    “Do you really want to get involved?”
    “I think I already am.”
    “I thought your big thing up here was keeping out of other people’s business.”
    “I can’t just walk away.”
    Sitting there watching Zack cook, listening to the mellow music on a soft evening in the shadow of the mountain, I should have been relaxed—after all, this was just the kind of life I’d moved upstate for. Instead I felt it rising through my chest, up my spine—that seductive mix of adrenaline, apprehension, anticipation.
    “Turn off that water,” I said to Zack.
    He looked at me, perplexed.
    “Just turn it off.”
    He did. I got up, took his hand, and hauled him to the bedroom.

I pulled into the Sawyerville lighthouse parking lot and Sputnik and I got out. The