The Stiff and the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

and well, this is a sensitive subject, Pauline. I sure hope no one is listening.”
    Stupidly I looked around. The parking lot was empty except for me. Helen’s car was still in the space, but she wasn’t in it. Maybe she forgot something in the building. “No one can hear us.”
    â€œOkay.” He coughed a few times to clear his throat.
    In the meantime, thoughts raced through my imaginative brain. Sensitive? As in, he knows who killed Henry if he really was killed. Or maybe sensitive in some million-dollar-money scheme sort of way. Or maybe . . .
    â€œSex, Pauline. It all boils down to sex. S—E—X.”
    Oh . . . my . . . God.
    Sex and the senior citizens.

Three
    What a thought. Actually, I respected and loved the elderly, and if they had sex, more power to them. They should live life to the hilt. Me, I guessed I was a wee bit jealous that they were having it—and I wasn’t.
    This time I looked around to make sure no one could hear me and whispered, “Okay, Uncle Walt, you are going to have to explain that one. What does sex have to do with Mr. Wisnowski dying?”
    Uncle Walt paused again. I wondered if he was adjusting the suspenders on his pants. He did that when he was thinking.
    â€œIt has everything to do with it. She—Helen, that is—came breezing into town about six months ago. She’s a widow. We’re mostly single or widowers at the center. Moves in with Sophie Banko. You know her, Pauline. She lives over on the corner of Pine and Maple Avenue. That big white house with—”
    Sophie? My Sophie?
    â€œThe black shutters,” I managed to say so as not to sound too interested. “I remember her.” Of course I knew her, since she was my new case! “Didn’t she have a son who went to school with Mary?”
    â€œThe convent?”
    â€œUncle Walt. Behave. I think they went to Saint Stanislaus School together. They were grades ahead of me.” Mary was knocking on the door of forty. No, wait. She passed through last November. My mind was acting as if I was approaching that door soon, but I had years to go. And don’t get me started on that ticking-clock thing. In a few months, on March 24, I’d be passing through the door of thirty-five. I planned to sneak in the window so no one would notice.
    Surely my mother would remember, though, and have some blind date over for dinner—and me.
    â€œForget the son. Loser, that one. Anyway, Helen sashays in, with that lilac hair of hers and that car—”
    â€œMaybe you’re just interested in her set of wheels?”
    â€œPauline, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
    My face flushed. I hoped Goldie was doing all right and not waiting for me. Then again, this was the clinic. Waiting was a way of life. “Sorry.”
    â€œSo, soon as Henry takes a liking to her—he also takes her out to dinner. You know that fancy restaurant down by the water?”
    â€œMadelyn’s.” I knew it very well since my old boyfriend used to take me there. Of course, after his incarceration, I stopped dating him.
    â€œRight. Henry was always the swinger of our crowd. Well, he starts bragging about . . . you know.”
    Geez.
    â€œI’m thinking he’s got to be having problems in that department, like most of us. Old Man Richardson with a prostate the size of an eighteen-wheeler’s inner tube. Benny, who works as an usher in the movie theater, says he hasn’t had working parts since the eighties. Mr. Kisofsky pees about every twenty seconds, and truthfully, I’m not exactly Valentino when it comes to that department either, Pauline.”
    That was more than I needed to know. More than I ever wanted to know. “I still don’t get—wait a minute. You mean Henry started using medication to help—”
    â€œViagra. At first I guessed he got his doctor to prescribe it. I don’t think that anyone