One Grave Too Many Read Online Free PDF Page A

was as big as Easy, heavier with a belly hanging over the waistband of his beltless khakis. He wore an old man’s grey sweater and a grey cap. When he got closer Easy could smell the earth and manure clinging to him.
    Gesturing with the shorthandle scythe, the gardener said, “Get your butt back in the car.”
    “I’ve come calling on Mrs. Goffman.”
    The Goffman house was a huge place, looking something like three or four English country inns shoved together. It sat at the crest of a dozen sloping acres. Far below, through the trees and over the high brick wall, you could see the Pacific. The color of the afternoon was beginning to thin.
    “You ain’t got an appointment.”
    Easy walked toward him. “How’d you know that?”
    “I get a list every morning. And there’s no big stud in a beat-up old Volkswagen on the list for today,” the man answered. He absently honed the blade of the scythe on the leg of his trousers. “Besides the old guy would never allow a big stud like you to visit her when he ain’t around. Not at all.”
    “Mrs. Goffman is home?”
    “Sure. She’s almost always at home, but you ain’t going to see her,” said the gardener. “How’d you get by the gatekeeper anyhow?”
    “That’s an interesting question,” said Easy. “He was even more belligerent than you.”
    “He’s a tough bastard, if that’s what you mean.”
    “Not the kind of guy you can bribe to let you in.”
    “Right. Everybody’s loyal to the old guy around here, he pays us to be. So how’d you get by the gatekeeper?”
    “I knocked him on his ass,” explained Easy. “And if you don’t go back to cropping your lawn I’m going to do the same thing to you.”
    “Bullshit you are.”
    “That will be quite enough, Mullin,” said a soft throaty voice. “Please tend to your gardening duties and don’t annoy my friends.” A slender redhaired girl had come out of the big house. She wore a brand new pair of white bellbottoms and a peppermint stripe shirt. There was gin on her breath.
    “Trouble,” said Mullin. “This is going to get people in trouble, Mrs. Goff …”
    “Go away, Mullin,” she told him. “And the next time you step in cowshit clean your shoes afterwards.” She smiled at Easy. “You wished to see me, Mr. …?”
    “John Easy,” said Easy.
    “Come into the house,” Danny Goffman invited. “There are fewer goons inside.” She put a warm hand on Easy’s, led him along the gravel to an oaken doorway with a brass lionhead knocker.
    Mullin stayed near Easy’s car, muttering, “Stupid bitch,” over and over to himself.
    Danny pushed the door open, pulling Easy into an immense dark-paneled hallway. “I was just fixing myself a sundown cocktail,” she said. “Care for a martini?”
    “No,” he said.
    The redhaired girl drifted into a living room full of dark, heavy furniture. One wall was entirely made up of long, high windows which looked toward the sea. “Prefer scotch?”
    “A beer will do.”
    Danny gave a small shrug. “You in training?”
    Easy said nothing.
    At a curving bar in the corner of the room the girl bent down. “We’ve got anything you can think of to drink, including Portuguese anise and carob brandy. Yeah, here’s some Tuborg. Will that suffice?”
    “Fine.”
    “I myself don’t see any sense in not drinking,” said Danny. “I enjoy it, so I do it. Do you ever think about death?”
    “Mine or somebody else’s?”
    “Yours, mine, anybody’s.” The girl uncapped his beer. “Sometimes when I’m out driving, on the occasions when I can sneak off the premises without a hassle, I get to looking at the people on the streets. Or when I’m down at Malibu sometimes on the beach and there are hundreds of people there … men, women, little kids. I suddenly feel very sad because not one of them is going to escape. They’ll all die. It’s a lousy thing to try to get used to.”
    Easy accepted the beer she’d poured for him. “I’ll tell you why I’m