Carl Hiaasen Read Online Free PDF

cleaners? The man can’t hardly pay for his own laundry. I want a speedy divorce, that’s all, and no trouble from him.”
    “Then just show him the pictures,” Dealey said. “And save number six for last.”
    Boyd Shreave’s wife thumbed through the stack until she found it. “Good grief,” she said, and felt her face redden.
    “Deli over on Summit. Broad daylight,” said Dealey, who’d taken the photograph from a parked car. The camera was a digital Nikon with motor drive and a 400-mm telephoto.
    “Is she actually blowing him?” Lily Shreave asked.
    “That would be my expert opinion.”
    “And what in the hell is
he
eating?”
    “Turkey and salami on a French roll with pickles, shredded onions, no lettuce,” Dealey said.
    “You can remember all that, but not her weight?” Lily Shreave smiled and fitted the stack of pictures back into the envelope. “I know what you’re up to, Mr. Dealey. You’re trying to spare my feelings. When I get stressed, I tend to put on a few pounds, sure, and lately I’ve been stressed. But don’t worry, I’ll get down to a size six again once I dump this jerk. So tell me—how much does she weigh?”
    “A buck forty,” Dealey said.
    “Oh, get real.”
    “Exactly. People always lie on their driver’s license.”
    “I mean, she’s six feet tall, so come on.”
    “Like you said, Mrs. Shreave, it doesn’t really matter. Adultery is adultery.”
    Boyd Shreave’s wife took out her checkbook. “Let me ask you something else about Miss Fonda. Do you think she put him up to it? I’m talking about the tree trimmer who murdered his wife. Is it possible this slut had something to do with it?”
    Dealey said, “The cops tell me no. I already called down to Florida because I was wondering the same thing. They said she passed the polygraph with flying colors.”
    Lily Shreave was somewhat relieved. Still, she made up her mind to move swiftly with the divorce, in case her husband got any nutball ideas.
    “Copies of the pictures are locked in my safe box. They’re yours if you want ’em,” Dealey said. He’d already made a dozen prints of the sub shop blow job, which he considered to be a classic.
    “I’m sorry things turned out this way,” he added.
    “No, you’re not,” Lily Shreave said, “and, frankly, neither am I.”
    She wrote out a check for fifteen hundred dollars. The private investigator put it in the top drawer and said, “It was a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Shreave.”
    “Whoa, you’re not done yet.”
    Dealey was surprised. “You want me to keep tailing your husband? What for?”
    “The oral stuff is okay, but I’d prefer to see documentation of actual intercourse.”
    “They usually don’t give out receipts, Mrs. Shreave.”
    She said, “You know what I mean. Pictures or video will do.”
    Dealey tapped two fingers on the desk. “I don’t get it. You’ve got more than enough to bury him already.”
    “The deeper the better,” said Lily Shreave, snapping shut her purse.

Three
    Fry’s father was the only man that Honey Santana had ever married, and they astonished themselves by staying together seventeen years. The sea change took place after Fry was born. He spent two weeks in the hospital, fighting to breathe, and it was during that wrenching time that Honey began hearing musical static in her head; battling uncontrollable spells of apprehension and dread; overreacting, sometimes radically, to the bad behavior of total strangers.
    From the day she brought Fry home, Honey was gripped with a fear of losing him to a random act of nature, an incurable illness, or the criminal recklessness of some genetically deficient numskull. The fright sometimes manifested itself in unacceptable ways. Once, when Honey had seen a car speeding down her street, she’d dashed out and hurled a forty-gallon garbage can in its path. Brandishing the demolished receptacle, she’d then accosted the stunned driver. “This could’ve been my kid you