Murder by Candlelight Read Online Free PDF Page A

shirt, over black and white, zebra-patterned
pants.
    Nodding to his former fans, Z murmured
his way through the knot of people who'd gathered around him,
managing, as he did so, to "lose" his name tag in a wastepaper drum
on the way to the "goodies" table, arriving to find Ted nearly
through the food line, Ted's never-popular wife beside him, the
woman's personality revealed in her selection of apparel:
unrelenting black.
    Though Z wasn't hungry, he got a plate
and speared himself a couple of melon pieces and two small
wieners-in-barbecue-sauce, the latter rescued from a
dangerous-looking crock pot.
    A can of coke from an ice-filled
plastic cooler, and Z was ready to follow Ted to one of the
aluminum-and-steel park benches under the shelter's wood
canopy.
    Ted looked the same, at least. Of
course, Z had seen Ted from time to time over a lot of years. Like
the others, Ted had put on weight, most of it in the fatty inner
tube he carried around his middle. As for the rest of him, Ted,
like his mind, was nondescript. Suspiciously brown hair, brown
eyes, brown skin, brown ... teeth.
    Ted's triangular-faced wife was
younger. Thin as an assassin's dagger, she had all the warmth of a
sack of broken glass.
    They'd had Z over to dinner a couple
of years ago; Z had taken them to a restaurant as payback; both
meals filed under "enough's enough."
    Ted and his wife began
eating, Ted shoveling in a wide variety of items Z hadn't
even seen on the
food table: potato salad, bread slices, spaghetti with meatballs,
pasta salad, fried chicken legs. Ted's wife was taking tiny bites
of a forked-through wiener -- the very image of a praying mantis
delicately dissecting an impaled bug.
    Practically everyone arrived, the
party was settling down to a conversational buzz, people splitting
off in the same cliques they'd formed in high school.
    There were the "circulaters," of
course, men dressed in tailored, tasteful summer suits and handmade
shoes. Dropping by table after table to say a pleasant word about
how well they'd done in life. A couple of doctors, one retired in
the Bahamas. Several lawyers. All worth millions, to hear them tell
it. Asking polite questions about Ted's and Z's occupations in the
pretense of showing concern for the welfare of the less
fortunate.
    "Outrageous," said Ted's wife, a
celery stick grasped in the pinchers of her short, front legs, the
woman chewing steadily with her powerful mandibles.
    "Wot?" Ted asked, his mouth full of
sliced turkey sandwich.
    "What we had to pay
for this ." She
nodded sullenly at her plate. "Get better stuff at Shoney's salad
bar -- at a cafeteria, for Christ's sake."
    It always hurt Z to hear a woman
swear. His Mother's influence.
    "The fifty bucks also pays for the
dinner!" Ted -- defending the honor of his class.
    Never what could be called
a tower of intellect, Teddy could be loyal ... provided it didn't cost
him.
    "Rubber wieners," the woman said
scornfully.
    "Wha' 'bout 'em?" Ted asked, chewing
fast, swallowing. "What you want, caviar? It ain't ... isn't ...
that kind of party."
    "As if we get invited
to that kind of
party."
    "What?"
    "A caviar party, is what. We're not
exactly on the A-list in Gladstone."
    "There isn't no A-list in Gladstone,"
Ted said with some dignity.
    "We're on the shit list."
    "That's not true."
    "Because of your job."
    "What's wrong with my job?"
    "You get no respect is
what."
    "What you mean I got no
respect?"
    "A crummy cop."
    "What you mean, a crummy
cop?"
    "Crummy."
    "Not a cop, neither. A
detective."
    "Same as!"
    "Is not!"
    As for Ted being a detective, Z was
the one to blame for that, Teddy unable to "detect" his dick with
his fly unzipped. It was Z who'd passed Ted enough tips to cause
Ted to advance, Teddy sometimes favoring Z with information only
the cops could get.
    It was then that Z was aware of
someone behind him, hovering, a situation Z tried to avoid by
sitting with his back to a wall -- when possible
    Carefully, Z turned. Saw ... Bud Izard
... Z