Murder for the Bride Read Online Free PDF

wasn’t going to be big enough for him to hide in. I would find him. It was that simple. I knew that I would find him.
    It made me remember a day long ago, and a beefy sadistic kid named Ronny who was three years older than my eleven. It was a cold day in the vacant lot with the wind whining around the piles of lumber. The kids stood and watched us through that nightmare fight. I was crying with anger as he kept knocking me down, and after a while the blows didn’t hurt any more. It was a kind of floating. An entranced monotony. And suddenly I knew, with perfect confidence, that I could not lose. Those who watched us no longer yelled. They stood with sick faces. When at last he went down, he stayed down. They pulled me off him. I spent a week in bed. A smallscar at the corner of my mouth is all that remains. And once again I felt that same unfounded confidence.
    If the coldness had not come over me, I could not have forced myself to stay in the apartment. Now I could. The many evidences of Laura no longer had the power to sicken me. I packed her clothes in her expensive initialed luggage, crisscrossed with fresh knife slits, and stacked them in the back of the closet. There was an empty carton under the sink. I filled it with jars and tubes and bottles of cosmetics and set it out in the hall. I took the yellow-handled toothbrush out and tossed it on top of the carton.
    I hung my own clothes in the closet. I left the door open because the inside of the closet was strong with the scent she liked best.
    The ringing of the phone startled me. I hadn’t realized that a phone had been installed. It took long moments to find it on the broad window sill behind a drapery.
    “This is Zeck. Hoped I’d find you there. We’re releasing the body. Any special place you want?”
    “Wherever you say, Lieutenant.”
    “Halbert and Rune, then. They’re in the book. You phone and tell ’em. They’ll know what to do. Inquest is this afternoon. Pick you up at two?”
    I agreed. I phoned Halbert and Rune and made the arrangements. The man asked about her rings. I told him to bury them with her. I told him the denomination and he said he’d get somebody for a short service.
    The formal proceedings at the inquest were quick and emotionless. “By hand of person or persons unknown.” I was sworn in and asked a few simple questions. How had I been advised to return from Mexico? Did I know of any new friends she might have made? Was there no mention of anything in a letter that might help? Jill was kept a bit longer and questioned closely about her final interview with the deceased.
    Jill and Tram went with me to the funeral chapel and then to the cemetery the following morning at ten. The cemetery was out on Gentilly Road. The plot was tiny and expensive. They do not dig deep graves in New Orleans. They dig down about eighteen inches and putin a concrete slab. The coffin rests on that, encircled by cement blocks. Later workmen roof over the block enclosure, cover the whole rectangle with smooth cement, and paint it white. The marble with the inscription is set into the end. The whole thing can be of marble slabs if you want it that way.
    It was like I wanted it. Just her name—Laura Rentane Bryant—and the dates. It was most odd to stand there and hear the murmur of the voice of burial mingling with the thrusting roar of traffic on Gentilly. I put a spray of yellow orchids on top of the coffin. Yellow orchids for Laura. And yet, who was Laura? I had to find out. Laura was a girl I had married. She was only a portion of this woman we had just buried.
    Tram Widdmar, a bellowing man with the general look of a vast cupid about to tell a questionable story, was as subdued as I have ever seen him. After it was over I wanted to walk, and I asked Jill to walk with me. We walked slowly west on Gentilly. We stopped in a supermarket and bought a loaf of bread and took it into a small park. We sat on shaded grass and flipped bread balls out to the