Tucker Peak Read Free Page B

was saturated with light.
    “You’re not going to want coffee, are you?” Manning suddenly asked.
    We both shook our heads.
    He sat back and crossed his legs. “There’s not much to tell. My wife and I come up weekends this time of year. Last weekend everything was fine. This one they ripped us off.”
    I pulled a sheet of paper from my pocket, rose, and crossed the thick wool rug to hand it to him. “That’s the list of missing items Sheriff Dawson prepared from your statement. Any changes you’d like to make?”
    Manning pulled a pair of half-glasses out of his breast pocket and scrutinized the list, eventually saying, “That’s it. The watch was the only thing I couldn’t replace.”
    “What was so special about it?” Willy asked. “Besides the cost?”
    Manning responded to the implication. “Yeah, that would stick out for you guys. The cost is irrelevant. It was a custom job, from my son on my sixtieth birthday. It’s a sentimental thing, one of a kind.”
    “You have a picture of it?”
    He gave us a sour smile. “Yeah, I do. The insurance company made a big deal out of it, bastards.” He reached over to a long table behind the sofa, opened a wooden box, and pulled out a wad of photographs. “I had these delivered to me this morning. It’s everything that’s missing, including the watch.”
    He extended the pictures to me but didn’t bother getting up, forcing me to cross the rug again to take them. I was half tempted to tear a page from Willy’s manual of style by fake kissing the man’s ring.
    Instead, I returned to my roost and handed the photos to Willy to study. He pointedly tucked them into his pocket without a glance.
    The sooner I was out of this gladiator pit, the better, I thought.
    “Did you sense anything unusual when you drove up this last time?” I asked.
    Manning shook his head but then answered in contradiction, “Yeah. Some snow had drifted onto the deck, in front of the front door, but it had been swept clean. I thought it was the caretaker, at first, why, I don’t know. Dumb yokel wouldn’t know a broom if he fell over it. It was obviously to get rid of footprints, but I didn’t figure that out till later, when I found the broken window they used to get in, around the far side of the porch.”
    “You asked him anyway?” I inquired.
    “’Course I did—he was clueless.”
    “Mr. Manning,” I asked, “when did you notice you’d been robbed?”
    “As soon as we got inside. For one thing, it was cold, from the broken window. But the small TV was missing from the kitchen. Peggy noticed that right off, no surprise.”
    We both caught the sardonic tone of voice again.
    “Where’s your wife now?” Willy asked.
    “She went back to the city. Anyhow, after that, I started looking around. Whoever did it was obviously low rent—missed the paintings and ceramics and grabbed whatever he could sell fast.”
    “And the watch was on your bedroom dresser?” I asked, recalling Snuffy’s report.
    “Yeah, out in plain view. You want to see where everything was?”
    I shook my head. “The sheriff’s people took photographs and made diagrams. Just out of curiosity, though, pretending this isn’t the smash-and-grab we’re all assuming it is, can you think of anyone who might’ve done this to get back at you for some reason?”
    The other man was genuinely nonplussed. “Get
back
at me? For what?”
    Willy rose abruptly and studied Manning, cradled by his overpriced sofa like a silver spoon on velvet. “Can’t think of a thing,” he said in an angry, flat voice and headed toward the front door. “I’ll be in the car.”
    Manning and I watched him leave.
    “Touchy guy,” he commented.
    I stood up also. “Yeah… Well, I don’t think so. You told the sheriff you thought one of his deputies might’ve been involved in this and that you also suspected the mountain’s security force.”
    Manning shook his head disdainfully. “I said that to get his attention—like