A Shroud for Aquarius Read Free Page A

long pause. Another clearing of his throat. And then a forced laugh.
    “Yeah, well, I know we’ve had our bad moments. But you were my son’s friend, and—”
    “Brennan. What?”
    “I’m still at the scene.”
    “The scene?”
    “Of the crime.”
    “Crime? You said it was suicide.”
    “Suicide’s a crime, ain’t it?”
    “Suicide sounds like the sort of case you could solve even without my help.”
    “Let’s not bicker, son.”
    Hearing him call me “son” sent a lump to my throat. I couldn’t tell you why.
    But I said, “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”
    “Yeah, it was. How would you like to come out here?”
    It was a farmhouse on a blacktop just off Highway 22, just past West Liberty. A big, stark white two-story with gothic lines set in a valley between two hills, sitting against a clear, starry summer sky. In the daytime this country looked like Grant Wood had painted it, and the farmhouse might’ve been the one his couple with the stern expressions and pitchfork posed in front of. At night it was just a farmhouse, and in the moonlight the rich rolling hills looked a barren gray. The only color was provided by the ambulance pulled into the graveled drive, its cherrytop turning and painting all in its path red, as two young men were loading a covered stretcher into the back. I got out of my car and walked over.
    Big Brennan, badge pinned to the light summer jacket over his cream-colored shirt, stood with his hands on his hips, gun-butt jutting, and pushed his Stetson back on his head, smiling tightly at me. He brushed a well-greased lock of brown hair off his lined forehead. He looked like a Marlboro man, only he didn’t smoke.
    “Nice of you to come.”
    “Nice of you to ask.”
    There was an awkward moment. Twice over the last eight years I’d been involved in murder cases that Brennan had handled. I am by no stretch of the imagination a detective, professional or amateur or anything else. My writing has dealt with crime, however, which is, I guess, the connection. Anyway, those two times, Brennan had been less than hospitable to my presence. Understandably. I was a civilian, getting in the way.
    On the other hand, I had proved unexpectedly helpful in both instances. And the last of the two instances—a couple of years ago—had left Brennan and me in a state of uneasy truce.
    Still, what was I doing here?
    “Brennan,” I said, “what am I
doing
here?”
    He shrugged, blew some air out, like he’d been underwater holding his breath for five or ten minutes. He grinned at me whitely; the grin I remembered—the teeth seemed to be new.
    “Nice car,” he said.
    I looked at the ambulance, the back of which was being shut by the two ambulance guys, both of whom I knew; they worked for the local funeral home but did emergency calls for the living as well. Would that tonight fell in the latter category.
    “What car?” I asked. I tucked my hands in my jeans pockets; there was a light, sweet-smelling summer breeze.
    “What do you think?” he said, smiling on one side of his face, cracking his tan. “Those are pretty fancy wheels.”
    “Oh,” I said.
    He meant
my
car—a silver Firebird.
    “Just like Rockford drives,” he said.
    “Brennan, they canceled that show, all right? Did you ask me here at four in the morning to talk about my car and old TV?”
    Then I saw that the smiles were all a facade. He was shaken, this tough old bird. His blue eyes—my friend John’s blue eyes stuck in his father’s skull—were watery. The small talk was just Brennan working out his nerves, and hiding how he really felt.
    “Let’s step inside,” he said.
    I moved toward the ambulance. “I want to say goodbye to Ginnie, first. Bill? Can you open that back up again?”
    Bill, a thin kid in his twenties who also worked at the local movie house, swallowed, glanced at his heavyset partner, Fred; Bill’s mouth, and the unlikely Gable mustache above it, twitched. “Sure, Mal. If you were a friend of