Lying in Wait (9780061747168) Read Online Free PDF Page B

once I arrived there, nor did I remember hearing that she had finished.
    â€œElse?” I asked. “Is this Else Didricksen?”
    â€œYeah,” Alan murmured. “Look who it is, Else,” he said, taking the weeping woman by the shoulders and bodily turning her around to face me.
    â€œYou remember this guy, don’t you, Else?” Alan continued. “Jonas Beaumont. He was just a little pipsqueak of a sophomore the year we were seniors, but he was already a damn fine basketball player. Give him the ball, and he could run and jump like a damn jackrabbit.”
    Else Gebhardt looked up at me. “BoBo?” she said uncertainly.
    It was the name that one year’s batch of cheerleaders had stuck me with—a relic I had thought buried in my past right along with my given name of Jonas.
    â€œThat’s right,” I admitted reluctantly. “BoBo Beaumont. It’s me, all right.”
    Although her bright blue eyes were wild with grief, Else Gebhardt smiled at me through her tears. Her hands sought mine. “Please, BoBo,” she pleaded. “Just let me on the boat long enough to see if it’s Gunter. I have to know.”
    â€œI’m not sure you should go anywhere near it,” I answered dubiously. “The man on board—if he is your husband—has been burned very badly. You may not even be able to recognize him.”
    â€œI’ll recognize him all right,” she said determinedly.
    In the end, we compromised. At my direction, the two uniformed officers reluctantly allowed both Else Gebhardt and Alan Torvoldsen past the crime-scene perimeter and onto the dock. I figured there wasn’t that much of a problem. It didn’t seem the least bit likely that Janice Morraine would allow Gunter Gebhardt’s widow access to the burned-out boat, and I was right about that. Janice didn’t.
    While Else waited on the dock, Janice Morraine brought one of Nancy Gresham’s police photos over to the side of the boat. The grisly Polaroid close-up she handed over to Else showed nothing but the dead man’s face. For a long moment after Janice placed the small color photo in Else’s hand, she didn’t look down at it. Once she was actually holding the proof she had demanded, it seemed asthough she couldn’t quite summon the courage to look at it.
    At last, though, she dropped her gaze and held the picture out far enough from her so she could see it clearly. Time seemed to stand still on the dock. There was no sound at all and no movement. Then Else Gebhardt’s features seemed to fall out of focus, and she fainted dead away.
    Luckily, Alan Torvoldsen was there to catch her. I’m not sure anyone of the rest of us could have managed. None of the rest of us were strong enough—with the possible exception of Marian Rockwell.

3
    Women don’t seem to faint as much as they used to, at least not as much as they did in the old black-and-white movies my mother watched on TV once she was too sick to sew anymore. She spent countless sleepless nights in the company of one late movie after another.
    And in those old thirties movies, when one of those pencil-thin female stars keeled over, there was always a strong leading man to catch her on the way down and deposit her on the nearest bed or couch, depending upon whether or not they were married at the time. My guess, though, is that none of those silver-screen beauties weighed nearly as much as Else Gebhardt.
    The woman stood six-something in her stocking feet. Stark naked, she would have outweighed me by a good thirty to forty pounds. She outweighed Alan Torvoldsen, too, especially considering the full-length wool coat, but Champagne Al didn’t seem to notice. He simply swept her up into his arms and strode off down the dock. Janice Morraine bent down and retrieved the picture before the wind blew the photo into the water, while I trailed off after Alan and Else.
    â€œWhere are you taking