Spark

Spark Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: Spark Read Online Free PDF
Author: John Lutz
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective
there was nothing in the world worth his worry. “Maude mention to you she was taking a trip?”
    Mildred looked uncertain, sliding her glasses higher on her sweat-glistening nose as if to see Carver better. They immediately slid back down. “She usually tells me when she’s gonna be gone more’n a day,” she admitted.
    Carver said again, “I’ll wait out here if you want.”
    Mildred hefted the screwdriver in her hand. “Who’d you say you were?”
    “My name’s Fred Carver. I’m working for a woman named Hattie Evans.”
    Something shadowed Mildred’s face. She’d heard of Hattie. “Don’t know her,” she said.
    “I need to talk to Maude,” he said simply. “Maybe she’s sick in there and hasn’t been able to get to the door or phone. It happens, doesn’t it?”
    “It happens.” She glared at him as if sizing him up finally, then moved over a few feet and stooped down and picked up one of several rocks lining the flower bed near the porch. It was about six inches in diameter. Apparently she’d found him wanting and decided to crush him.
    But instead of hurling the rock at Carver, she opened it like a hinged box and removed a key.
    “Looks real, don’t it?” she said, as she replaced the now obviously lightweight fake rock.
    “Fooled me.” He stood back as she unlocked the door and shoved it open, poking her head inside to yell for Maude Crane.
    Immediately she backed reeling out onto the porch, as if someone had punched her in the face. The screwdriver clattered on the concrete floor and she stood gaping at Carver, sickened and terrified.
    He caught a whiff of the stench that had struck her like something solid.
    Mildred tried to speak but no sound emerged, only a string of saliva that glistened on her chin in the sun. Carver helped her walk twenty feet away from the door, where she sat down with her legs spread wide on the hard ground and vomited.
    After a while, he rested his hand on her damp back. “You gonna be all right?”
    She nodded, staring at the mess on the grass between her legs. Her glasses had somehow gotten spotted.
    “Don’t try to get up,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
    Another nod.
    He set the tip of his cane and limped toward the open door, a metallic taste at the edges of his tongue.
    Ten feet away he took a deep breath and held it, then quickened his pace. He shoved the mail aside with his cane and hobbled into the house.
    The air-conditioning was off and the place was even hotter than outside. In here, the faint buzzing he’d heard on the porch was a din, with a frantic rising and falling pitch. This time of year especially in Florida, he knew what it was.
    A dark cloud of flies swarmed relentlessly in the center of the dining room, feeding on something dangling from the chandelier.
    The something was Maude Crane.

6
    C ARVER PARKED THE OLDS in the wide lot of the medical center the next day and limped toward the circular four-story buff building. The morning sun pressed hotly on his shoulders and he knew the top of his head was getting burned. Virility could be a burden. Maybe he’d have to borrow one of Hattie’s lids.
    When he got inside the building, he saw the practicality of its architecture. On each floor, the rooms were off short halls leading like spokes from a hub that was the nurses’ station, so that each patient was only steps and seconds away from the healing hands of mercy.
    The elevator reached the fourth-floor offices, and he limped out and told a redheaded receptionist at a long curved desk he’d like to talk to Dr. Billingsly. She smiled and asked him to please have a seat, which he did, for almost an hour.
    Just as he reached the very brink of Muzak madness, a short, stocky young man wearing a wrinkled green surgical gown and cap entered the waiting area and smiled at Carver. He didn’t look old enough to be a doctor, which made Carver wonder how old he might look to Dr. Billingsly.
    “William Billingsly,” he said, shaking hands
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