The Company She Kept Read Online Free PDF

clustered along the counters and cabinet edges like small Disney characters jamming a set’s balconies and sidewalks. The two cops mostly observed it all, sometimes reaching out to see past an obstruction, but otherwise content to simply interpret the nature of the woman who’d owned it all—and who’d attracted such a grisly death.
    By the evidence available so far, the mind and spirit of that late resident had been committed to an impressively broad swath of social causes.
    â€œAnd a vegetarian,” Lester added softly.
    â€œGolly,” Willy replied. “What a shock.”
    Upstairs, they found an overstuffed, computer-equipped office, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms—one clearly intended for guests who took relative sanitation and the effects of mold in stride. Of the bedrooms, one had been moderately cleared for the occasional visitor, another had been sacrificed to the same purpose as most of the downstairs, and the last was an utterly surprising and totemic lair-within-a-lair, anchored by an enormous bed of rumpled and cast-about pillows, blankets, and even a few stuffed animals. At long last in this activist warehouse dedicated to intellectual passions, here was a clearly marked reserve for purely sensual delights.
    From the Georgia O’Keeffe prints on the wall, to the lesbian literature near the head of the bed, the two cops felt the palpable heartbeat of a woman in love with the sexuality of other women.
    â€œOkayyyy,” Lester said after taking it in. “Is this a surprise?”
    Willy was looking around like an art lover at an exhibition. For all his brusqueness and irritability, his primary targets were liars, hypocrites, and people coasting on the effort of others—or of society in general. He might not have agreed politically with Susan Raffner, but he’d never questioned her tenacity and zeal. All he saw here was the inner expression of someone who’d lived as she believed.
    â€œA pleasant one,” he answered sadly, thinking of his own continual struggle with an inner galaxy of emotional turmoil and guilt.
    Lester cast him a covert glance. Though not a simple man, Spinney was not overly complex. He accepted life as it came, made adjustments if he could, and lived with what remained. That being said, he was no unquestioning observer, which helped explain why he found Willy an excellent source of human education.
    He nodded silently, understanding his partner to be enjoying a kinship moment with someone for whom he’d only expressed contempt while she was alive.
    Willy opened a nearby dresser drawer and extracted a vibrator, nestled among some silky underwear.
    â€œPhew,” Lester commented, absorbing it all. “I better take notes on what to buy Sue next Valentine’s.”
    â€œPlease,” Willy groaned, as he circled the bed, toward the night table, and crouched to study a small plastic baggie lying on the floor. Without disturbing it beyond yawning it open to better see inside, he let out a small grunt.
    â€œWhat?” Lester asked.
    â€œThe requisite Mary Jane,” Willy said, straightening up. “I wondered—with all of this”—he gestured generally—“if she indulged in a little something to get mellow.”
    Les looked more closely from where he stood. “Well, this seems like it was the room for mellow—a love nest of Lesbos.”
    Willy glanced back at the bag. “Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m actually surprised there’s not more—maybe this is just a grab stash, fed off a mother lode somewhere else. Looks like pretty cruddy quality, too.” He then smiled, his expression clearing as if moving on to other matters, and added, “The crime scene boys are gonna love this dump. We’ll lose ’em for days in here.”

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    Most cops don’t like dead bodies, which is hardly startling. Because TV has pushed the notion that