A Shroud for Aquarius Read Free Page B

the deceased, I don’t see why not.”
    I took a step, then felt Brennan’s hand on my shoulder.
    He whispered in my ear. “Say goodbye from here.” His breath smelled like Clorets.
    Bill stood poised by the doors, a hand on one handle.
    “It’s okay, Bill,” I said, waving him off. “Thanks anyway.”
    Bill nodded, and got in the ambulance and went away. No siren. What for?
    I watched it glide up the hill and disappear over the top and said, to myself, “’Bye, Ginnie.”
    Then I followed Brennan into the house.
    We went in the front way and were in a high-ceilinged living room; it was an odd mixture of eras. Pastels, earth tones, dominated. Most of the furniture was antique, including an oak ice-chest turned into a liquor cabinet. Plants in pots grew on window ledges and on the floor in corners and climbed up the edge of the second-floor steps. But there were several pieces of modern furniture, including a geometric couch with brown and tan interchangeable elements and the odd art deco piece, a lamp of a nude woman holding a ball of light, another that was a rounded airplane out of a thirties Disney cartoon, glowing orange. There was a 26-inch Sony color TV and a component stereo against one wall; no bookcase. The floor was plushly carpeted, wall to wall, in a tan shag. And on the walls were framed art nouveau prints. It was an interior decorator’s nightmare, particularly because it worked.
    “She had a nice life here,” Brennan said, glancing around.
    It didn’t matter that the things in this room were largely of no interest to him: that they had cost plenty of money impressed him. That made Ginnie’s life “nice,” by definition. His.
    “She sure did.”
    He pointed. “She, uh—did it upstairs.”
    We went up past the plants to the top of the stairs and a small room, three walls of which were lined with books. Books of all kinds. Books by Buckminster Fuller, Aldous Huxley, John Lily, Timothy Leary, Carlos Castaneda.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. The Great Gatsby. Eleven Kinds of Loneliness.
A few paperback mysteries I’d given her back in junior high, stacked together: Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, Roscoe Kane. Two books called
Casino Gambling,
one by Feinman, another by Barnhart. Other gambling books by Goren and Scharff. Books by Albert Camus, James M. Cain. And some schmuck called Mallory.
    There was a desk by a window, an old beat-up rolltop that had belonged to her father, the top rolled up. Various scattered papers, soaked with blood. The window seemed smeared with something.
    “She did it here at this desk?” I asked.
    “That’s how it looks,” Brennan said.
    “Any note?”
    “None. Those papers are some kind of figuring. Arithmetic.”
    “Who found her?”
    “We did. People in the farmhouse across the way called it in. Heard gunfire.”
    “Tell me more.”
    He shrugged. “She was slumped there. Was, uh—wasn’t wearing nothing. Gun in her hand, bullet through her brain.” He swallowed; trying to say it brusquely didn’t seem to have done the trick for him. “It was worse than that, really. It was a big gun—.357 mag. Wasn’t much of her head left.”
    That’s why he hadn’t wanted me to see her.
    I looked around the desk. “Where’s the, uh—”
    “Brain matter and such? We cleaned it up already.” He nodded toward the smeary window. There was a splintery hole, from the bullet apparently, in the wood. “We’re ’bout done here. My two punk deputies have taken pictures of the scene and all.”
    “Where are they now?”
    “Having a look around the rest of the house, steppin’ on each other’s peckers, more’n likely.”
    “What are they looking for?”
    He shrugged again. “Drugs, maybe.”
    “Drugs,” I said flatly.
    “That’s right.” He pointed to the book shelf; his finger lit on
The Teachings of Don Juan.
“I hate to think it about little Ginnie, but there’s no getting around it. She was a hippie.”
    “That term’s a little out of date, isn’t