Gone Crazy Read Online Free PDF Page A

once. Lookin’ for Daddy’s squirrel rifle.”
    I had to ask. “Can I ask where?”
    “She moved ‘em after that,” said Ken impatiently, fingers flicking dismissal. Then he blinked, seemed to remember something. “Oh. You wouldn’t know. Mama was a what-you-call it. Some fancy thing now. Hoarder, that’s it. Pack rat, we called her. Doubt she threw a damn thing out. Kept it all clean,” he continued. I noticed his English had grown markedly less formal. Get someone rattled, you can always tell where they’re really from, socio-economically speaking. “But you couldn’t move two feet without comin’ up against some box of shit she said she couldn’t throw out. Dunno how the little kids survived. You know we found her dog once under a bunch of magazines fell over? Followed the flies buzzin’.” He shuddered, grimacing. His eyes were dark and mean with memory. “Oughta just set fire to the house and to hell with it.”
    Boris’s tail had remained still, confirming my impressions. I said silkily, “And to hell with her money?”
    Ken turned red, glared at me. “I loved my mama.”
    “Money’s a powerful motive,” I pointed out. “About how much do you figure there was?”
    He shook his head. “Dunno.” Now he thrust his head forward, shoulders hunched. “You-all won’t let us in there!”
    The county police, headed by that idiot Rucker, hadn’t done more than seal the house. A real inventory would take forever, or at least months, if I waited for them. Especially if they’d seen the inside of her house. I’d run into a couple of hoarders before, and that’s not something you forget.
    I noted that I’d try to get Harry Rucker to help me get permission to do the inventory myself. I asked Ken, “When we do an inventory, you can tell us if anything’s missing?”
    “How the hell would I know?”
    Good point, but it had to be asked.
    The meanness was back. “You don’t go stealin’ my mama’s things!”
    Boris’s ears flicked. I felt his claws dig into my legs, and the faint wriggle that meant he was readying for a pounce. I petted him a moment, letting Ken blush and mumble an apology in his own time.
    “You told Harry Rucker you thought maybe one of your siblings did it.”
    Distracted, Ken grunted an affirmative.
    “Which one?”
    “Well, can’t be Buck, he’s down to Benning.” Ken shrugged widely. “Could be any of ‘em.”
    “Not the cousins?”
    Ken snorted. “Nah. They got their own shit to worry about. It’d been one of us. Mama didn’t let no one else in the house.”
    I didn’t mention someone could have broken in. I ticked off the list of his siblings. “Eileen?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Army?” Short for Armisted, and a hell of a name to stick on a kid, in my opinion.
    A sneer. “That stuck-up bitch wife of his.”
    An interesting sentence fragment. I moved on. “Rob?”
    Ken laughed. “No balls. Mama shelled them out years ago.”
    A motive of itself.
    “Beau?”
    “Piece of shit.”
    “Okay,” I said, “how about Laura?”
    “Absolutely not. Laura’s just about the nicest woman you’ll ever meet.”
    Finally, I thought. A sibling he liked.
    “Davis?”
    “Faggot.”
    I pinked a bit. Aunt Marge disapproves of such terms. Strongly. “So that means you don’t think so?”
    “Nah. He might get dirty.” He mimed floppy-wristed prancing.
    “Marilee?”
    “She’s in Norfolk. Never comes home. She and Mama didn’t speak.”
    “Honey?” I asked next. I’d been a year or two behind Honey in school. Speak of uptight you-know-whats.
    “Pissy bitch.”
    I took that as a yes, she could kill her mother.
    “Jeff?”
    “Nah. He didn’t like Mama much, but he just sticks to himself up the hollow.” He pointed loosely north. “Don’t even know if anyone’s told him Mama’s dead.”
    The Waltons they weren’t. I flipped my notebook shut, and dumped Boris to the floor. “What about you?”
    Ken briefly paled, then turned brick-red. “What the hell’s