3 Strange Bedfellows Read Online Free PDF Page B

more exasperated than grief-stricken, I finally recognized her anyway: she was the Hack's widow. I'd seen her mug on the back of his campaign brochures, gazing up at him adoringly.
    What argument had I interrupted? And who were all the other men in the room? Unfortunately I didn't have time to figure it out. "Excuse me," I said belatedly and withdrew, closing the door behind me.
    The quarrel instantly started up again—but quieter this time. They were trying to be discreet. All I could hear was an occasional "Screw you!" or "The hell with that!"
    Disappointed, I started back down the hallway. But then I noticed an open bathroom to my left, immediately next door to the bedroom in question. Even better, there was a connecting door, now closed, between the two rooms.
    Carpeing the diem, I snuck into the bathroom and shut the door to the hall. The noises from the living room and kitchen fell away. I tiptoed to the connecting door, dropped down to the floor, and put my ear as close as it could go to the crack under the door.
    The voices began leaking through. "If you think I'm gonna lie down and let you fuck me," a man was saying, "dream on."
    "Damn it, Pierce," another man growled, "if the widow goes through with it, and you two split the vote, that asshole Shmuckler could win."
    "Give it a rest," the first speaker —Pierce—said. "Shmuckler'll be lucky to get five percent."
    "We don't know that," a third voice whined. "What if people get some sick kick out of voting for a murderer? We can't risk it."
    "So you're gonna let this bitch scare you into doing what she wants?" Pierce yelled, outraged.
    Then there was a sudden silence. What was going on in there? I wriggled even closer to the door, putting my ear right up against the crack —
    And the door burst open.
    I looked up from the floor. The bald guy was standing there with his hand on his hips, glowering down at me. Behind him, five other pairs of eyes glowered down at me too.
    Feeling like a poor excuse for a worm, something too low to even use as fish bait, I scrambled awkwardly to my feet. "Excuse me," I mumbled for the second time in two minutes, grinning inanely, and got the hell out of there.
     
    My wife laughed her head off later that day, when I told her how I'd been caught in the act. "Hey, it wasn't funny," I complained.
    "I'm sure it wasn't," she said, and laughed even harder.
    I didn't get too riled at her, though. I knew this was just Andrea's way of releasing nervous tension. She had gone along with my decision to help Will beat his murder rap, since she'd become friends with him too over the years. But she wasn't too thrilled about the whole thing. She still maintained —with some justification, I must admit—that the only reason I'd escaped my previous Sam Spade impersonations alive was because I got lucky as hell.
    Finally she got her guffaws under control. "So what were these people quarreling about?" she asked.
    I'd had plenty of time to cogitate about that quarrel, with its allusions to "splitting the vote" and "letting this bitch scare you." "I think the other men in that room were Republican county chairmen," I said. "Pierce and the widow were both asking them for the party endorsement. And the widow was threatening to run anyway, even if they didn't endorse her—and even if that meant the Republican vote would be split."
    Andrea whistled. "She' s acting pretty ballsy for someone who just lost her husband."
    "Yeah. And she didn't seem too horribly broken up about his death, either."
    "I'll have to ask Rosalyn about her."
    Rosalyn was Andrea's friend, a fellow English prof at her community college. "Why Rosalyn?"
    Andrea frowned at me. "I thought I told you. The Hack's wife took a course from her."
    "Oh, right, I rememb er." Actually, I didn't. Yet another symptom of the alarming forgetfulness I'd been having lately. Dreaded middle age strikes again.
    Any further discussion of Rosalyn and the widow was halted by my two sons, who suddenly raced into