The Juliet Read Online Free PDF

reason. And if someone else grabbed it up first, well that was their problem. Everyone who came to visit Lily Joy was a sensitive soul, searching for something unexpected.
    And if no one collected the letter it would crumble away, release its treasure, and there would be a girl’s bone in the grave at last. The very first.
    Budge always felt bad that it was all made up. There was no Lily Joy, and she wasn’t buried behind the jailhouse either. He knew, because he’d done a little excavating shortly after settling in Centenary. He fancied himself an amateur archaeologist. He always dreamed of unearthing Lily’s skull, and all the good things that would happen if he did.
    As he undressed and crawled into his narrow bed, he heard the yip-yip-yip of a coyote just getting started. There’d be two more parts to this call: an escalation of staccato barks that sounded like mad laughter, followed by drawn out howling. Coyotes had to work themselves up to get their point across.
    It wouldn’t be long before the first van-load of tourists pulled into Centenary, cranking up the dusty road.
    Everyone looking.
    There was always the possibility he had never dug deep enough. He was too old to do a thorough job. What if she was only a shovelful away, only a few more inches below? The uncertainty was sort of romantic.
    Just before he dropped off, he heard the creak of his own front door being nudged open. Hesitation in the steps that followed, and the sigh of a skirt dancing through the dust. Lily Joy did not exist, but in these liminal moments she came to him anyway. She loved The Mystery House and trailed her fingertips along the walls that were cool but taking on the heat of the rising day. He liked to think of her looking for him this time, and because of her impossible condition, never succeeding.
    The sun chased shadows through the house. On the table the blue envelope peeled open of its own accord. Budge’s Lily, the woman of his dreams, was a lost woman who had found a clue. She sat down to read what she had written.
     
     
     

 
     
    THE GREAT BLOOM
    Chapter 2
     
     
    “Look kid, you want to be your own man, learn to leave like you ain’t coming back.”
    —HOLT BRECK (Rigg Dexon) in Gallows River (1977)
     
    March 19, 2005: Centenary, NV
     
    Rigg Dexon stood in the doorway of The Mystery House and watched a plume of dust sail in his direction. Visitors. As the plume fanned out and grew closer he cursed softly, the way a real man does when company’s coming. Perhaps the retired cowboy actor wasn’t suited to a hermit’s lifestyle, but he’d never get a chance to find out, would he? With tourists crawling all over the desert, no place was safe. He blamed it on the flowers.
    The winter had brought a record rainfall of six and a half inches to Death Valley, and by spring, hipsters were floating kayaks on Lake Manly, a pluvial rift lake that hadn’t seen real water in 10,000 years. The wet winter led to the “Bloom of the Century,” and in March the desert was blanketed with swaying fields of white, yellow, and pink flowers.
    The plume of dust turned into an old blue Subaru wagon that eventually squared itself with The Mystery House, grinding to a stop. This sort of thing happened more than he liked. Dummies sometimes managed to make their way to Rigg’s front door, despite its location up a class two canyon road. He was prepared for unwanted guests and kept a crate of bottled water by the door; it made it easier to send folks on their way if he was hospitable. If they recognized him and made a big enough deal about it, he gave them cooled bottles from the old, humming Frigidaire in the kitchen.
    This time it was a couple, looked like retirees, or at least the woman did, with her steel-colored hair. The man was just an uninteresting blur through the windshield. Missouri plates. Looked like they couldn’t wait to come charging up for adventure, but now that they were parked in front of the shack maybe they weren’t