Read Online Zigzag by Bill Pronzini - Free Book Online Page B

bikini, her and some of her friends, and flirt with the crew.” Waxman shook his head disapprovingly. “Spoiled rich kid. If she were my kid, I wouldn’t have put up with it.”
    â€œJust harmless flirting, then?”
    â€œWell, none of the men said otherwise. Or seemed to mind except when she followed them around and got in their way. Maybe she was the reason for the stop-work order, but I don’t see how, since nobody here complained about her.”
    â€œStop-work order?”
    â€œMr. Holloway called it in when we had less than three weeks left on the job. No workmen allowed on the property until further notice.”
    â€œHe didn’t give a reason?”
    â€œNope. Just the order. Then a couple weeks later, somebody in his office calls up and says okay, now we can go ahead and finish up.”
    I chewed on that before I said, “Can you tell me exactly when the stop-work order was issued?”
    â€œMust’ve been the middle of June,” Waxman said. “I remember because it was right after the Fourth of July that the crew went back to work.”
    â€œMiddle of June. Just about the time Ray Fentress was arrested.”
    â€œSay, that’s right. Day or two afterward, I think it was. But that couldn’t’ve had anything to do with Ray or his boozing. I mean, I don’t see how it could, do you?”
    â€œNo,” I said, “I don’t.”
    Coincidence, probably, I was thinking as I returned to my car. Puzzling, but irrelevant. Even if there’d been some sort of personal connection between Fentress and the Holloway family that had triggered the change in him, it had all happened nearly two years ago; a connection, after all that time, to the double shooting at Floyd Mears’ cabin seemed inconceivable.
    And yet …
    I’ve had stranger cases, a few with such seemingly disjointed facts as these that turned out to be interrelated after all. This one was a muddle no matter what linked up and what didn’t, and I was fresh out of other leads to help untangle it. Unless I wanted to report failure to Doreen Fentress and walk away from the investigation—and I was not ready to do that just yet—I owed it to her and to myself to explore even the most tenuous possibilities.

 
    10
    When I got back to South Park, the noise level from the renovation work on the three-quarter-acre oval seemed even louder than usual. The clamor, continual when the weather permitted, penetrated the old walls of our building and made conducting business a literal headache at times. Not that Tamara or I begrudged the necessity for it; on the contrary. The “town square of Multimedia Gulch,” smack in the middle of SoMa and its technology ecosystem, had become something of an eyesore in recent years—dead grass, cracked asphalt paths, sycamores and elms in poor shape, the creosote-covered children’s play structures so dilapidated the city had finally removed them, leaving a sandy pit that had devolved into a dog run. Finally a group of residents and businesses, ours included, had gotten together and spearheaded the renovation, the first in more than forty years. When it was finished, South Park would have wider pathways, open meadows and raised grass hillocks, plazas, concrete retaining walls with benches, and a new kids’ play area. The sooner the better, for more reasons than one.
    In the office I asked Tamara to find out anything that might be even remotely relevant about the Holloways of Burlingame. She was busy with other, more pressing work, so it took a while for her to accommodate the request.
    â€œI pulled up some interesting bits,” she said when she called me into her office. “Might be worth looking into.”
    â€œSuch as?”
    â€œLet me give you a little background on the Holloways first. The family head, Vernon, is a near one-percenter—not Silicon Valley mega-rich, but worth around twenty mil on