JM03 - Red Cat Read Online Free PDF Page B

loser you are, and how they’re sending you to military school. So you better run now, before the Marines show up to take you.”

    I stumbled backward until I hit the hallway wall. My eyes were burning. “Fuck you, crybaby,” I whispered.

    David stared at me and tugged at a tiny scrap of skin over his Adam’s apple. He looked for a long time and then his fist came up from what seemed like nowhere and split my lower lip.

    It was the first time for that too.

    I shook my head and shook the thought away and the restaurant din returned. David was still looking at me across the table.

    “So where the hell does this Cade live— in Wilton?”

    “Somebody named Nicole Cade lives there— the only Cade in town; I don’t know if she knows Holly. But Jill Nolan grew up there, and she and Holly were childhood friends, and—”

    “Yeah, yeah, yeah— I get it,” David said, and looked up and down Seventeenth Street some more. “Just call me when you get back.”

    The waitress came to refill my coffee cup, and when she left David did too.

    * * *

    Wilton was just over an hour’s drive from the city, north and east on 95 and then north on Route 7— chaotic interstate followed by strip malls followed by pricey clapboard suburbs. Concrete and slush gave way to pines and stone fences and still white snow, and the cars were fewer but more expensive. I turned off 7 onto Route 33, toward Ridge-field, and turned again when I came to Cranberry Lane. It was a quiet road and the houses were large and far-between along it. My rent-a-car fishtailed through two miles of scenic turns before I reached the Cade place.

    It was a red-doored, black-shuttered white colonial set well back from the road, and set handsomely in its landscape. The big lindens in front would make for nice shade in summer and nice color in fall, and the conservatory at the south end, while certainly not original, was well proportioned and well matched to the lines of the roof and the flow of the faГ§ade. The plantings around the stone foundations were wrapped in neat burlap. Snow lay like cake frosting on the brown bundles and covered the broad front lawn in a pristine blanket that was painfully bright under the noontime sky. The curving drive was plowed to a layer of ice and packed gravel and I took my time driving up, parking in the turnaround by the garage, and walking back down the shoveled flagstone path. The man on the front steps, fussing clumsily with a screwdriver and the hinges of a storm door, watched me the whole way.

    He was middle-aged and bulky, and soft-looking all over, and his dark eyes were vaguely nervous behind rimless glasses. He took off his Red Sox cap and his brown hair was messy and thinning underneath. He wiped his brow on the sleeve of his corduroy shirt, and cursed when he dropped his screwdriver into the snow. He stooped to retrieve it and the storm door swung against his hip. I caught him by the elbow before he tipped.

    “Thanks,” he said softly. He steadied himself on my arm as he rose. His face was small and bland and fleshy around the jaw. A web of shattered veins darkened the pinched end of his nose, and embarrassment colored his unshaven cheeks.

    “Mr. Cade?” I asked.

    His mouth puckered in annoyance. “My name is Deering, Herbert Deering. Who are you looking for?”

    “Nicole Cade,” I said. Nicole Cade was the name the public records search had returned— the owner of this house, its purchaser six years back from a Fredrick Cade.

    The man’s annoyance heightened for a moment, and then was gone. “Nicole’s my wife, but she didn’t say anyone was stopping by. You are— who?”

    “John March. Is your wife at home?”

    Deering slid the screwdriver into the back pocket of his jeans and wiped his hands on his thighs. “What is it you want to see her about?”

    I looked past him through the open door, into the entrance foyer and down the wide center hall. I saw a brass chandelier, cream-colored walls,