The Anteater of Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

up. There are two strikes against me. I’m the law, which they only respect at a distance, and worse, they’re afraid I may be related to their maids. Since you’re more familiar with these society types than I am, you could help me. Ask a few questions real casual-like, and find out who was where the night of the murder.”
    “Be a police snitch? Have you lost your mind?”
    “This is serious, Teddy. Or doesn’t murder mean anything to you?”
    Remembering what was left of Grayson’s body, I flushed. “Anything else you want me to do?”
    “Tell me what you know about Grayson and his wife. And the rest of the family.”
    What I knew about the Gunns could fill several sets of encyclopedias, but I stalled for time. “What do they have to do with this?”
    He sighed. “You used to be really smart before your mother shipped you off to that snooty girls’ school.”
    Thus breaking up our teenage love affair. “Miss Pridewell’s Academy wasn’t snooty.” But it was located in Virginia, and too far away for a fifteen-year-old girl to sneak back and see her half-Hispanic boyfriend. Which had been the whole point.
    “Do I have to arrest you to make you to cooperate?” He tried to make a joke out of it.
    Following his lead, I stretched my hands forward. “Cuff me now, Sheriff. Lawsuit to follow.”
    He laughed. “Now I remember why I fell in love…” He cut the sentence short and pretended to watch a big research vessel leaving the Gunn Landing Marine Institute dock. “About Grayson. He worked in real estate, right? How successful was he?”
    “Only minimally. And just because I’m answering your questions doesn’t mean I’ve agreed to do your dirty work.”
    “Understood. What else can you tell me about him?”
    “He loved his wife. A lot. More than was healthy for either of them.”
    I described the time my mother had invited the couple to one of her parties. Grayson had spent the entire evening following Jeanette around like a puppy, even waiting for her outside the door every time she visited the powder room. Once I’d tried to lure him back into the living room with the promise of a drink, but he refused to leave his post.
    “Jeanette wants me here when she comes out,” he’d said.
    The same behavior occurred at an Animal Welfare League dinner I’d once attended. Every time his wife left his side to chat with someone else, he began to fidget. Not that she was any more independent. When I’d steered him over to an exhibit table to see a model of the League’s proposed no-kill animal shelter, she’d hurried along behind, as if fearing I was about to run off with him.
    “He was at least twenty years older than her,” I said. “Maybe she needed a father figure, and he needed a dependent daughter figure. Whatever their problems, it worked for them.”
    “They didn’t have kids?”
    “Nope.”
    “Her father is dead, right? Everett Gunn?”
    I nodded. “Both her parents were killed on a nature expedition in South America, drowned when their boat overturned. She was around twenty when it happened. Since then she’s been borderline agoraphobic and for the last year she’s been getting worse. Could be that’s what those migraines are all about.” A seagull flew down and began to peck at the remnants of a biscotti. Bonz and Fluffalooza barked in unison, but the seagull ignored them. When two more seagulls joined him, the dogs hid under the table. “Grayson wasn’t much of a traveler, either. He liked to stick close to home. I imagine that’s why she married him.”
    “Or she was in love. Some people do marry for love, you know.”
    That stung. “I loved Michael!” But not like I’d loved Joe.
    “Nothing personal.”
    I lowered my head so he wouldn’t see the misery on my face. Why had I allowed my mother to break us up? And why had Joe given up so easily? Before I’d entered my senior year at Miss Pridewell’s, he married his next-door neighbor, and by the time I graduated, they