An Equal Opportunity Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

that had stamped him. He had studied not law, as his family had intended, but forestry, then taken the necessary jobs in less desirable areas until he had the seniority to get back here. Now he was home.
    “How could something like this happen?” he was saying. “Here. To Frank. It must be some connection from when he lived in San Francisco. Or maybe one of the new people.” Ned always referred to the homosexuals and other emigrants from San Francisco, who had “discovered” the Russian River a year or two ago and were on the way to making it their own, as the “new people.” He wanted to make it clear that he didn’t care about their habits, he cared that they were disrupting his town. “Maybe they tried to get Frank to be a middleman in a drug deal, and Frank refused, and then they killed him. That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
    “I suppose it would, as well as anything else,” I said. “There are enough drugs in the area. And Frank was shot.”
    “But it was with his own gun.” Rosa Fortimiglio pulled up a wooden chair and sat across from Ned. I realized, as she spoke, that I had been too startled to ask Sheriff Wescott anything about Frank’s death, but Rosa wouldn’t have made that mistake. “It was with his own gun,” she continued, “the one he kept in the bar. You remember last summer, when he had to threaten two big drunks with it?”
    We all nodded.
    “Outsiders,” Ned added.
    “Shot him,” Rosa said. “Wiped the fingerprints off the gun and left it on the bar. Cool as can be.”
    “Outsiders,” Ned said.
    Madge Oombs, who had been sitting quietly, shook her head. “How would an outsider get there? Would they drive right up the street? The sheriff checked on that. They asked the old people who live on the hill across from Frank’s Place. There are three of them, you know. They don’t miss a thing. They sit by the window, watching the road, all day. They didn’t see any strangers drive up there. They didn’t notice anyone come after Chris. Isn’t that right, Rosa?”
    “Not a soul, so they said.” It was obvious that the two friends had carried on an in-depth discussion in the kitchen while Rosa heated the fettucini.
    “So how did they get there, Ned?” Madge demanded.
    “Parked and walked?” he suggested. But, even as he said it, we all knew it was wrong.
    “Ned,” Madge said, “there’d be no reason for an outsider to park half a mile away and trudge through the rain, on a road that has no sidewalk—only mud at either edge. They couldn’t know about the old folks staring out the window. And besides, the lawns are so flooded now that any pedestrian would have to walk in the middle of the street, and you don’t think those old folks would miss that, do you?”
    “Well, no.” Ned’s lips were pursed. He hated to have the outsiders cleared so quickly. “Then how did the murderer get there if he didn’t drive and he didn’t walk?”
    We all knew, but we waited for Madge to say it. “The river. Someone came down the river, past the empty houses that the summer people use. They came up to the hidden dock under the bar and up through the trap door.”
    We all knew what that meant, but again we waited for it to be put into words. Rosa said it. “It’s possible that a stranger might know the trap door existed, he might have heard about liquor being cooled in the water below during Prohibition. But no stranger would be able to find a small boat and get it downriver with the water like it is today, find the inlet into Frank’s, do his deed, and get the boat back. No outsider.”

CHAPTER 4
    N OT SURPRISINGLY, I DIDN’T sleep well that night. Rain hit the windows in gusts; eucalyptus branches slapped against the house. I should have had the trees trimmed last fall, as the neighbors had suggested. Now the ground was soaked and wouldn’t support such tall trees. They would crash into the house. I wouldn’t have to worry about being implicated in Frank Goulet’s