The Knights of the Cornerstone Read Online Free PDF Page B

Postum stole it, because I didn’t see him do it, but
somebody
took it out of the car when I was in the store, and Postum is the primary suspect. I didn’t make any other stops on the way out here. Also, there was another weird thing. I’m virtuallycertain his truck passed me heading west, maybe fifteen miles before I got to the store. Might have been a different truck, because I wasn’t really paying attention, and there was a lot of glare, but it was pretty much the same vintage and with the same hole in the muffler. I’d bet a nickel it was him.”
    “So you think he was
looking
for you? He was cruising up and down the highway, and when he spotted you he turned around and came back to steal the box?”
    “I don’t know what to think. I guess there’re lots of old pickups out here in the desert. Also, how the heck would he know it was
me?”
    “Well, that’s a twenty-dollar question. What’s important is that he
did
. I half expected something like this, but I wasn’t sure it would be Postum. Now we know. Anybody else with him?”
    “No.”
    “Did you tell him your name?”
    “He overheard it when I was talking to Shirley.”
    “Well, he’ll be wondering whether you’re a player or just a courier, but he won’t be able to say for sure. Either way looks likely.”
    “You think he did it out of spite? Because you turned him down as a lodge member?”
    “I don’t think that quite covers it. One thing’s for sure, though—there’s more to Bob Postum than meets the eye. But like I said, I already suspected that. I just wonder how
much
more and how soon we’ll find out.”
    “Well, I’m sorry for losing the veil,” Calvin said. “Aunt Iris and all …”
    “You can cheer up about that. The veil in the box Hosmer sent you is a fraud. This one you got from Shirley Fowleris the real McCoy. Hosmer and I thought we’d throw out a little bait—see what kind of fish came up out of the river to gobble it up. You follow me?”
    Calvin nodded shrewdly at his uncle. In fact, though, he didn’t follow any of it and hadn’t been following it since the middle of the afternoon.
Bait?
And what would Bob Postum care about Aunt Iris’s veil? Perhaps there was some sort of explanation that led back to Iowa at the dawn of the Cretaceous period, some old feud—unrequited love, terrible jealousies, dead toads hung from door knockers. “What were you two fishing
for
?” Calvin asked. “Not that it’s any of my business.” He picked up the case of soda, the paper sack, and the Fourteen Carats book off the seat, and they set out toward the house.
    “
Men
,” his uncle said heavily, “and now here you are, and Bob Postum, into the bargain.” He laughed, as if it were a joke. He opened the front door and Calvin followed him into the dim interior, where the swamp coolers were evidently doing their job. The place had a wine cellar kind of cool to it, at least compared to outdoors—very still and heavy with the smell of water-cooled air, cut stone, lemon-oiled wood, and old books. The furniture was solid and dark, as if it had been built by a medieval craft guild in some distant age, which maybe some of it had been, and there were Turkish carpets on the floor and a long picture window looking out through the cottonwoods to the river. The religious art and relics on the walls and tables lent the place an air of dusty antiquity. Nothing had changed, apparently, from the last time Calvin had been here. Probably nothing had changed for the past fifty years. He liked that. The absence of change had an almost irresistible allure for him, and he could easily picture himself twentyor thirty years from now, safely content within the confines of this very house here in New Cyprus, sheltered from the world by the Dead Mountains and the desert and the desert river.
    “Tell me one other thing,” his uncle said to him, breaking the spell. “Did Postum see Shirley give you the second box?”
    “No,” Calvin told him.