A Cold Day in Paradise Read Online Free PDF

I left the force. I was still trying to deal with what had happened, collecting three-quarter pay on disability. I came up here expecting to sell off the property and the cabins. He had built five more of them by himself, each one bigger and better than the first. When I decided to stay a while, I took the first one, even though it was the smallest and there were some gaps in the logs that let in the cold. I’m sure those were the logs I had done myself, back when I was young and stupid.
    L ATER ON I spent a slow Sunday night at the Glasgow, reading the paper over a steak and a cold Canadian beer. The murder had come too late for the Sunday edition, so the good people of Chippewa County would have to wait another day to hear about it. Violent deaths weren’t uncommon up here, but it was usually the lake that did the killing. Maybe four or five men a year, caught in sudden storms. Murder was a little different. It would make everyone nervous for about two weeks and then they’d forget it ever happened.
    “Good evening, Alex.”
    I looked up from my paper. Edwin stood next to the chair across the table from me.
    “Sit down,” I said, and he did.
    “So,” he said. “Anything interesting in the news?”
    I looked at him and turned a page. “Not in today’s paper,” I said. “Tomorrow’s will be a little more exciting.”
    “Yeah, I know,” he said. “A reporter already called me today. Can you believe that?”
    “A reporter called you? How did he get your name?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “But you know how those reporters are.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I didn’t give them your name,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t tell them about you coming out to help me. I figured that’s the least I can do.”
    “Hm.”
    “I’m really sorry, Alex. I shouldn’t have bothered you with it.”
    “Edwin, can I ask you something?” I put the paper down and looked him in the eyes. He was wearing a red flannel shirt that day, trying to look like one of the locals. It wasn’t working.
    “Sure, go ahead. Anything.”
    “What are you doing getting mixed up with that guy in the first place? Didn’t you tell me that you weren’t going to gamble anymore?”
    “Yes, I did,” he said. “I did say that.”
    “You were sitting right across the table from me, just like you are right now,” I said. I looked across the room. “No, it was right over there. That table right there by the window. Remember? ‘I, Edwin J. Fulton the third, hereby resolve that I will never gamble again, and that I will go home and be a good husband to Sylvia, and Alex will never have to come to the casino and drag my butt home because I’ve been gone for two days.’ Do you remember saying that?”
    “Yes,” he said. “I remember that very well.”
    “When was that?”
    “I don’t know, it was around the end of March. Right after that last little episode.”
    “Yeah, that little episode,” I said. I could feel the anger building inside me, and it wasn’t just because Edwin was gambling again. If the man throws his money away, that’shis business. But then he leaves his wife at home for days at a time, all alone in that big empty house out on the point. A woman like Sylvia, who had too much of what I was starving for. The winters up here are too long. I had too much time to think about it, knowing she was alone in that house waiting for me.
    “Alex, it’s not what you think.”
    “No, of course not. You were delivering five thousand dollars to his motel room in the middle of the night, but it’s not because you were gambling.”
    “Alex…”
    “As it turns out, the guy was selling Girl Scout cookies on the side and you bought two thousand boxes.”
    “You don’t understand,” he said.
    “Yes, I do. That’s the problem. I understand you completely.”
    Edwin got up from the table. I thought he’d leave, but instead he went up to the bar and ordered a Manhattan. He came back with it and sat back down.
    “Alex,” he said.