Read Online Tombstone Courage by J. A. Jance - Free Book Online Page A

arbors dried up and went to seed. For a while, without human intervention, only the ivy and one tall tree were tough enough to hold out against the dry realities of the arid Southwest. Now Jaime Gonzales, the new gardener, was starting the slow process of reclaiming the gardens and the upper terraces, but on that far lower level, all that remained was that one old tree, brown-needled and dying.
    Holly remembered how tall and alive it had been, green against a warm blue sky that spring afternoon. The precocious eleven-year-old Holly Patterson had been flat on her naked back, waiting for poor, hapless Billy Corbett to figure out how to make his dinky, useless “thing” stand up. It finally did, after Holly showed him how to rub her stiff little nipples with his groping fingers, but even then it didn’t work. When Holly had taunted him, laughed at him because he didn’t even know where to put it, Billy had slapped her hard across the face. His blow had left a bright red handprint on her cheek, one she had been hard-pressed to explain to Mama that afternoon when she came home from school.
    Remembering that time, Holly rocked even harder and pulled the sweater closer around her body. Billy Corbett had died in Vietnam. His wasone of the first names on the memorial plaque over by the new high school.
    It served him right, Holly Patterson thought, thirty-nine years after that jewel-clear spring afternoon. Whatever Billy Corbett got, it served him right.
    There was a knock on the door. Holly jumped, surprised by her own nervousness. She would have to remember to tell Amy how she was feeling and ask her what it meant. Ask her to put her under and calm her, make the bad feelings go away. Maybe, later on, they could go for a ride in Rex Rogers’ bright red Allanté. Maybe Amy would even let Holly drive.
    She had read in the paper that Marliss Somebody, the old battle-ax who wrote a weekly column for the Bisbee Bee , actually thought the car belonged to Holly. That was a laugh. When she was evicted from her last roach-plagued apartment, Holly Patterson had scarcely anything left to call her own. Amy had helped her salvage the few paltry possessions that remained in storage back in California. And what she had she could keep only so long as she continued to pay the month-to-month storage rental.
    The knock came again, and Holly realized she hadn’t answered. “Who is it?”
    â€œIt’s me. Isobel.”
    â€œCome in.”
    Isobel Gonzales, the gardener’s wife who served as both cook and housekeeper, bustled into the room. She stopped short when she saw Holly’s untouched lunch tray.
    â€œYou don’t like what I cook for you?”
    â€œI’m not hungry.”
    Isobel shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Not eating is bad for you. It will make you sick.”
    This place is making me sick, Holly thought. And it wasn’t just Billy Corbett, either, although at first she had thought it was, hoped it was. No, it was something else, something much more than that, something about the dump itself, perhaps. Whatever it was, it remained just out of reach, beyond the grasp of her conscious mind.
    She had felt it the first day, as soon as she had set foot in the house. Of course, it was nice of Paul Enders—Pauli to his friends—to lend his “cabin by the lake” to his friends when he found out they were going to Bisbee on business. Of course, there was no lake anywhere near Bisbee. But for someone who lived in the high-pressure world of Hollywood costume design, it was important to have a hideaway where he could go to let the creative juices flow. Besides, Casa Vieja had been such a wonderful period-piece bargain that he simply couldn’t afford to turn it down.
    Paul Enders was only the latest in the long series of Casa Vieja ’s would-be rescuers. The exodus of miners in the late seventies along with a real estate glut had left even low-cost rentals