Read Online Where Echoes Live by Marcia Muller - Free Book Online Page A

fragment of the dynamite crate in the trunk before I started for Vernon. When I passed Hy Ripinsky’s ranch house, I saw the lights were on and the Morgan parked next to the Land Rover. On impulse, I pulled off the road and knocked on his door.
    Ripinsky answered at once, a book in hand, his tall figure clad in faded jeans, a badly frayed sweater, and scuffed moccasins. He blinked in surprise, but seemed glad to see me.
    The house’s living room was more attractive than its exterior suggested: Woven Indian rugs covered the pegged-pine floor, the sectional sofa and chairs were deeply cushioned and comfortable looking, on shelves flanking the stone fireplace sat hundreds of colorfully jacketed books, and on the wall above the mantel was a display of antique rifles. Ripinsky offered me a beer and went to fetch it. I crossed to one of the bookcases and studied the titles.
    Justice Rides Alone; Horses, Honor, and Women; Wear a Fast Gun; Hell on the Pecos; Bitter Sage; The Last Days of Horse-Shy Halloran. Westerns, apparently. I picked up a volume that lay horizontally on top of some others: Hopalong Cassidy and the Trail to Seven Pines, by someone called Tex Burns. Leering wickedly, Hoppy crouched over the recumbent figure of a man while Topper gazed on placidly. Hoppy was—so help me!—dressed prettily in lavender. This book, I thought, could easily become a hot collector’s item in San Francisco’s predominantly gay Castro district.
    Ripinsky returned and handed me a Bud. “I see you’re interested in my westerns.”
    â€œThis in particular.” I held up Hopalong.
    He grinned. “Bet you never suspected about old Hoppy. I bought that one strictly for the dust jacket—the book is unreadable. Actually I bought a lot of my collection for the jackets; they were wonderful, particularly on westerns, in the thirties and forties.”
    He spent a few minutes showing me some of the better ones, many by an artist named Nick Eggenhofer. Then he took me to the shelves on the other side of the fireplace and pointed out a book on Eggenhofer’s life and art—appropriately titled Horses, Horses, Always Horses —as well as other reference works on the Old West.
    â€œI’ve got to confess I haven’t read half the nonfiction,” he said. “I prefer fiction. My wife claimed the little boy in me was trying to make up for never getting to be a gunfighter.”
    But according to local gossip, I thought, he had become a gunfighter of sorts. I wanted to ask him about his rumored connection with the CIA, but his face had grown melancholy after he spoke of his dead wife. This was not the time to question him about personal matters. I sensed there might never be a good time for that.
    â€œSo,” he said, motioning for me to sit on the couch, “brief me on what you found out in the valley.”
    â€œVery little, I’m afraid.” I filled him in, ending with my discovery of the fragment of dynamite crate on Earl Hop-wood’s garbage heap.
    â€œOdd,” he commented. He took a briar pipe from the table next to his easy chair and began filling it. “Earl doesn’t prospect much anymore, and he never did go in for anything as ambitious as hard-rock mining, even though he owned that acreage on the mesa. I can’t imagine what he’d be doing with dynamite.”
    â€œLily says she doubts there’s ever been any gold near his cabin. What do you suppose he lives on?”
    Ripinsky lit his pipe. Through the curling smoke he said, “I’m sure he’s found a fair amount of gold up and down that stream over the years, and he’s bound to have Social Security. You forget—it doesn’t cost much to live in this part of the state, particularly in the manner Earl’s become accustomed to.”
    â€œBecome?”
    â€œEarl hasn’t always been a prospector. Up until twenty years ago he ran the filling station across from