3 - Buffalo Mountain: Ike Schwartz Mystery 3 Read Online Free PDF Page A

Slinky?”
    “Flannel. It’s cold and you and I are way past slinky.”
    ***
    Donnie Oldham needed money. The last few dollars from his sawmill pay were gone. He had a truck payment due. He had food to buy and he owed Wick Goad almost a thousand dollars. He was sure Goad cheated at poker, but he never could catch him. And cheater or not, he held Donnie’s paper and would come looking for him soon. The wallet only had thirty bucks and the credit cards.
    It had felt weird picking through some dead guy’s wallet, but shoot, he wouldn’t need the money anymore and Donnie sure did. He would use the credit cards for a while—maybe over the county line down in North Carolina, though it could become risky after a couple of days.
    He wished he had a way of figuring out their PIN numbers. Then he could use them and the bank card at ATMs. He thought of Hollis. Hollis’ dad used to be a spook or something and Hollis said he knew all about how to do stuff like that. He’d ask Hollis. Then he’d, quick as a rabbit, milk the bank account for as much cash as he could and sell the cards. He could pay off Goad, the finance company, and nobody would be the wiser. Of course, Hollis might want a cut. Son-of-a-bitch-greedy-bastard. He’d take care of him later if he did, but first he had to get the PIN number.
    He cracked open another Miller Lite and watched Saturday Night Live . Those guys were, like, super funny. He’d someday go up there to New York and see them make that show. He could do it. All he needed was one lousy break. It wasn’t his fault his old man couldn’t make a go of the gas station. Stupid old man. The fire had been an accident, everybody knew that. He should have collected on the insurance. But did he? No, he’d listened to those pussy investigators and then they all looked at Donnie and the next thing you know, the money, the gas station, and finally, even the old man went away. A pussy, that’s what the old man was.
    “Well, I’m not,” he shouted at the TV. “I’m getting mine, you wait and see.”

Chapter 5
    Sunday seemed to have mislaid its dawn. The night’s black simply paled into progressively lighter shades of gray until daybreak could be confirmed. The threat of snow menaced the mountains to the west. Sooty clouds scudded across a gritty sky. Cars pulling out of the church’s parking lot made crunching sounds, as if their frozen tires were battling the macadam to see which would crack first. The Reverend Blake Fisher stood shivering just inside the double doors, seeing his eight o’clock congregation on their way home.
    Robert Twelvetrees, Colonel, United States Army (ret.), first attended Stonewall Jackson Memorial Episcopal Church the day after he officially became a civilian thirty-five or forty years previously. Except for a rare bout of flu, he never missed a Sunday. He sat at attention in the third pew from the rear on the left side.
    “The gospel side,” he corrected those who did not know that churches did not have rights and lefts. Not in his world, they did not. They had an east and a west, a north and a south. The altar was always east, even if a compass indicated otherwise. The entrance and narthex, if one existed, were west and then the left and right side of the nave as you faced the altar were north and south respectively. It was a simple system and he could not understand how anyone could miss it.
    “If the left side is north,” they asked in obvious confusion, “why do you say you sit on the gospel side?”
    Colonel Bob would shake his head sadly and wonder at the ignorance of the generation that would soon be in charge of the world.
    “Because that is the side they read the gospel from,” he’d snap. “Any fool can see that.”
    “But the vicar always reads the gospel in the aisle about halfway down in the…ah—”
    “Nave. Yes, but that is new. The gospel used to be read from over there.” He gestured left. “So they call it the gospel side.”
    “I thought