The Night Visitor Read Online Free PDF

III, affectionately called Ratsy by his friends, was leaning back in a leather desk chair, his feet crossed on top of the desk. He waved Tom inside with a fly-fishing rod he held. “Come on in, old sport. Everyone know Tom Fuller, my future son-in-law? Tom, this is everyone. You know where the bar is. Take a cigar.”
    The guys shouted greetings to Tom.
    Tom apologetically raised his hands. “Let me first deliver my message from Evelyn—”
    “Say no more, Tom. Consider it delivered. We’ll keep a lid on our festivities, and we won’t kill the messenger.” Richard raised his glass. “My wife, I love her, but…”
    “As if I don’t have an interest in the success of this event,” said Richard Alvin Tate IV, known as Richie, the only child of Ratsy and his first wife, Boo. “Langtry Cosmetics is the sponsor, and I am the CEO.”
    “The CEO,” several guys there repeated, mocking him.
    “Shaddup.”
    Tom noticed that Richie’s hands were covered with blotches of Mercurochrome and different sizes of Band-Aids. “What happened to you?”

    Richie dismissively waved his almost-empty cocktail glass. “Lost my footing on those uneven stepping stones and stumbled into some rose bushes. I’m all scratched up, and Paige is almost in tears, not because I’m hurt but because of the roses. She’s going”—he raised his voice to imitate his wife—“ ‘How could you? That’s Elizabeth Taylor.’ ”
    “You sorry SOB,” Richard said. “Evelyn’s going to have your hide for breaking her La Liz roses.”
    One of Richie’s friends stood, picked up a brass letter opener, and tapped it against his glass, making the crystal ring. “Richie’s earned a new moniker: Dances with Roses.”
    A howl went up.
    Richie was sprawled in a deep chair near an open gun cabinet. He raised a hand, grinning. “I was just looking at the pictures of Anya they were showing on a screen, thinking about what a great piece of ass she was, and I lost my step.”
    A guy said, “I still can’t see how anyone could have put a bullet in that face.”
    A pall fell over the gaiety in the room.
    “I knew when Anya bought that gun she’d get into trouble with it,” Richard said. “She was so happy when she got her concealed carry permit.”
    “I helped her get it and I’ve spent many a night regretting that,” Leland Declues said. He was the Tate family’s attorney and Richard’s fraternity brother and longtime friend. He was a tall, lean man with a soft voice and gentle mannerisms that hinted at subcutaneous fierceness. “We went to Ventura County. Easier to get one there than in L.A.”

    “She was a good shot,” Richard said. “I took her to the gun range.”
    “She was good at many things.” Leland puffed his cigar.
    The conversation dropped as everyone looked at Leland, waiting for more.
    “I just meant she was a force of nature. She lit up any room she entered. She was fun to be around.” Leland held his cigar in front of him, admiring how the ash formed.
    Richie got up and poured more scotch into his glass from a bottle on the bar. “How about how that sister of the idiot who murdered Anya is still stirring the pot? She was on the news today. The anniversary of the shootings gives her another opportunity to get her sorry face on television and go on and on about how her brother was framed by the wealthy and powerful Tate family to protect the real killer, Rory Langtry,” he said with faux drama in his voice. “Leland, can’t you do something to put a sock in her?”
    “Best to ignore her,” Leland said. “Issuing a public response will only add fuel to the fire.”
    Richard noticed Tom at the bar examining the label on a bottle and seized the opportunity to change the subject.
    “Fifty-year-old Macallan,” Richard said. “Please, Tom. Indulge. I brought that back from our golf trip to Scotland. You won’t find a better single malt scotch, in my opinion. That is, unless you happen upon a classic Springbank.