The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Read Online Free PDF
Author: Christopher Moore
Tags: Humor
wanting to hear a peep out of the little North County burg of Pine Cove, so when Theo walked into his little two-room cabin, he wasn't surprised to see a red seven blinking on his answering machine. He punched the button and listened toBurton 's assistant insisting that he call right away – seven times.Burton never called the cell phone.
    Theo had come home to shower and ponder his meeting with Val Riordan. The fact that she had treated at least three of his ex-girlfriends bothered him. He wanted to try and figure out what the women had told her. Obviously, they'd mention that he got high occasionally. Well, more than occasionally. But like any man, it worried him that they might have said something about his sexual performance. For some reason, it didn't bother him nearly as much that Val Riordanthink him a loser and a drug fiend as it did that she might think he was bad in the rack. He wanted to ponder the possibilities, think away the paranoia, but instead he dialed the sheriff's private number and was put right through.
    "What in the hell is the matter with you, Crowe? You stoned?"
    "No more than usual," Theo said. "What's the problem?"
    "The problem is you removed evidence from a crime scene."
    "I did?" Talking to the sheriff could drain all of Theo's energy instantly. He fell into a beanbag chair that expectorated Styrofoam beads from a failing seam with a sigh. "What evidence? What scene?"
    "The pills, Crowe.The suicide's husband said you took the pills with you. I want them back at the scene in ten minutes. I want my men out of there in half an hour. The M.E. will do the autopsy this afternoon and this case will close by dinnertime, got it?Run-of-the-mill suicide.Obit page only. No news.
    You understand?"
    "I was just checking on her condition with her psychiatrist. See if there were any indications she might be suicidal."
    "Crowe, you must resist the urge to play investigator or pretend that you are a law enforcement officer. The woman hung herself. She was depressed and she ended it all. The husband wasn't cheating, there was no money motive, and Mommy and Daddy weren't fighting."
    "They talked to the kids?"
    "Of course they talked to the kids. They're detectives. They investigate things. Now get over there and get them out ofNorthCounty. I'd send them over to get the pills from you, but I wouldn't want them to find your little victory garden, would you?"
    "I'm leaving now," Theo said.
    "This is the last I will hear of this,"Burton said. He hung up.
    Theo hung up the phone, closed his eyes, and turned into a human puddle in the beanbag chair.
    Forty-one years old and he still lived like a college student. His books were stacked between bricks and boards, his bed pulled out of a sofa, his refrigerator was empty but for a slice of pizza going green, and the grounds around his cabin were overgrown with weeds and brambles. Behind the cabin, in the middle of a nest of blackberryvines, stood his victory garden: ten bushy marijuana plants, sticky with buds that smelled of skunk and spice. Not a day passed that he didn't want to plow them under and sterilize the ground they grew in. And not a day passed that he didn't work his way through the brambles and lovingly harvest the sticky green that would sustain his habit through the day.
    The researchers said that marijuana was only psychologically addictive. Theo had read all the papers.
    They only mentioned the night sweats and mental spiders of withdrawal in passing, as if they were no more unpleasant than a tetanus shot. But Theo had tried to quit. He'd wrung out three sets of sheets in one night and paced the cabin looking for distraction until he thought his head might explode, only to give up and suck the piquant smoke from his Sneaky Pete so he could find sleep. The researchers obviously didn't get it, but Sheriff John Burton did. He understood Theo's weakness and held it over him like the proverbial sword.ThatBurton had his own Achilles' heel and more to lose from its
Read Online Free Pdf

Similar Books

Dalir's Salvation

Nina Crespo

How to Entice an Earl

Manda Collins

A Play of Knaves

Margaret Frazer

Capture the Wind for Me

Brandilyn Collins

Hannah Howell

Highland Hearts

I Will Have Vengeance

Maurizio de Giovanni, Anne Milano Appel

The Valkyries

Paulo Coelho