Jade in Aries Read Online Free PDF Page A

really mean to die, and the storage shed is too dangerous if you just want to call attention to yourself.”
    “But the police think it was suicide,” she said.
    “They won’t for long. When Cornell comes to, he’ll tell them what happened. With any luck, he knows who did it to him.”
    “What if he doesn’t come to? What if he dies?”
    “There are too many things obviously wrong with a suicide verdict,” I said. “The fact that his partner was just killed a week and a half ago, in addition to everything else. They’ll come around to murder.”
    “What if they don’t?”
    I shook my head. “Then I don’t know,” I said. “It won’t be the first time anyone got away with murder in this city. But I don’t think it’ll happen.”
    “You won’t do anything?”
    “Me?” I frowned at her. “Why me?”
    “He came to you for help,” she said.
    “And I helped him.”
    “And he sent you that beautiful scarf.”
    “Kate, he didn’t buy me with that scarf. I didn’t ask for it, he sent it as a thank-you for what I’d already done. He hasn’t asked me to do anything else, and there’s no need for me to do anything else. He’s in a hospital now, the killer won’t be able to get at him again, the police are on the job. If he comes to, he’ll tell them what happened. If he doesn’t, they’ll investigate anyway.”
    “What if they don’t?”
    “It isn’t my responsibility, Kate,” I said.
    She looked at me, and I could see her carefully not saying several different things. I am frequently amazed that she goes on putting up with me as I am now, and every time we come to a moment like this I feel a sudden pillar of cold in my chest, thinking, This is the time she leaves.
    But it wasn’t. She folded the paper, looking away from me, and in a neutral voice said, “Will you be working downstairs today?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “I’ll be going shopping later on.”
    “All right.”
    She still hadn’t looked at me. She got to her feet and carried the breakfast dishes over to the sink.
    I wanted to say, We know who I am, Kate, why be disappointed in it? But I didn’t say anything, and a little later I went down to the basement and went to work.

3
    T HREE DAYS LATER, FRIDAY, they delivered the first load of building supplies for my sub-basement. Lengths of two-by-four, a bag of cement, two different sizes of concrete block; the bill was higher than I’d expected. It bothered me to write out the check, particularly when I was bringing no money into the house myself. This was Kate’s money I was spending, more than mine, and though I knew she wouldn’t grudge me, I didn’t feel right about it.
    The two men from the lumberyard weren’t happy about delivering everything to the basement, but I worked with them and it didn’t take that much time or effort. Then I paid them and they left, and I went back downstairs to go to work.
    All I had done so far was dig. I had first used a sledge to break through the concrete floor in an area against the rear wall that extended ten feet along the wall and three feet out into the room. The broken pieces of concrete I had piled in a corner, after straightening the edges of the opened area as much as possible with a chisel and a smaller hammer. Then I’d started to dig, shoveling the dirt into empty cement bags, of which I had six. Whenever all six bags were full, I left off digging long enough to carry the bags one at a time upstairs and empty them in the back yard along the wall, the dark mounds looking odd surrounded by snow. All of this made for slow going, but that was, after all, the object.
    I was digging a hole ten feet long and three feet wide, and I was digging steps in as I went, making the first step a long one because I would later cover these steps with the smaller concrete blocks. I had now dug to a depth of about four feet, and had four steps. I could begin at once to use some of the building supplies I’d bought.
    From the beginning, I’d been