Murder at the Foul Line Read Online Free PDF Page B

to be expected, it being a Thursday, but Keller realized he’d unconsciously been waiting for the man to show himself
     in shorts and a singlet, dribbling a basketball.
    In the driveway, Grondahl paid no attention to the basketball backboard but triggered a button to raise the garage door. There
     was, Keller noted, only one car in the garage, and a slew of objects (he made out a barbecue grill and some lawn furniture)
     took up the space where a second car might otherwise have been parked.
    Grondahl, given his position in the corporate world, could clearly have afforded a second car for his wife. Which suggested
     to Keller that he didn’t have a wife. The fine suburban house, on the other hand, suggested that he’d had one once upon a
     time, and Keller suspected she’d chosen to go away and had taken her car with her.
    Poor bastard.
    Keller, comfortable behind the wheel, stayed where he was while Grondahl backed his Grand Cherokee out of the driveway and
     drove off somewhere. He thought about following the man, but why? For that matter, why had he come here to watch him leave
     the house?
    Of course, there were more basic questions than that. Why wasn’t he getting down to business and fulfilling his contract?
     Why was he watching Meredith Grondahl instead of punching the man’s ticket?
    And a question that was, strictly speaking, none of his business, but no less compelling for it: Why did somebody want Meredith
     Grondahl dead?
    Thinking, he reminded himself, was one thing. Acting was another. His mind could go where it wanted, as long as his body did
     what it was supposed to.
    Drive back to the motel, he told himself, and find a way to use up the day. And tonight, when Meredith Grondahl comes home,
     be here waiting for him. Then return this car to Hertz, pick up a fresh one from somebody else, and go home.
    He nodded, affirming the wisdom of that course of action. Then he started the engine, backed up a few yards, and swung the
     car into the Grondahl driveway. He got out, found the button Grondahl had used to raise the garage door, pressed it, got back
     in the car, and pulled into the spot recently vacated by the Grand Cherokee.
    There was a small boulder the size of a bowling ball standing just to the right of Grondahl’s front door. It might have been
     residue from a local avalanche, but Keller thought that unlikely. It looked to him like something to hide a spare house key
     under, and he was right about that. He picked up the key, opened the door, and let himself in.

    There was a chance, of course, that there was still a Mrs. Grondahl and that she was home. Maybe she didn’t drive, maybe she
     was an agoraphobe who never left the house. Keller thought this was unlikely, and it didn’t take him long to rule itout. The house was antiseptically clean, but that didn’t necessarily signal a woman’s presence; Grondahl might be neat by
     nature, or he might have someone who cleaned for him once or twice a week.
    There were no women’s clothes in the closets or dressers, and that was a tip-off. And there were two dressers, a highboy and
     a low triple dresser with a vanity mirror, and the low dresser’s drawers were empty, except for one which Grondahl had begun
     to use for suspenders and cuff links and such. So there had indeed been a Mrs. Grondahl, and now there wasn’t.
    Keller, having established this much, wandered around the two-story house trying to see what else he could learn. Except he
     wasn’t trying very hard, because he wasn’t really looking for anything, or if he was, he didn’t know what it might be. It
     was more as if he was trying to get the feel of the man, and that didn’t make any sense, but then what sense was there in
     letting yourself into the house of the man you were planning to kill?
    Maybe the best course of action was to settle in and wait. Sooner or later Grondahl would return to the house, and he’d probably
     be alone when he did, since he was beginning to