Unknown Read Online Free PDF

sorry you had to be involved in this. Call me when you get home,” she had said. Dot sounded a little shaky but not terribly upset. I guess when you’ve seen everything she has in seventy years, it’s hard to get real upset about most things. I knew I should call, but that would mean more than just talking on the phone, knowing Dot, and I didn’t have the energy to go over and talk to them at this point.

     

    We ended up talking briefly the next morning amidst a lot of commotion on the driveway. The first person to show up was somebody I should have expected sooner. Sam Blankenship had been the lowliest reporter on the food chain at the Rancho Conejo edition of the Ventura County Star when Dennis was killed. Sam used his coverage of what, at first, just looked like a suspicious death at Conejo Board and Care to boost himself higher in his editor’s regard. Now he actually covered part of the crime beat.
    His fortunes hadn’t improved enough to do much for his wardrobe yet. He still wore battered khakis and a barely presentable shirt but he had some charm that made people talk to him. This morning was no different. The company that owned the portable toilet had sent out a driver and one of their big trucks to remove the facility. “First time I’ve ever had a call like this one,” the driver told Sam as he operated the hoist equipment that lifted everything onto the back of the truck. “I’m supposed to take the whole unit, contents and all, to the sheriff’s department because it’s evidence. Can you believe that? And I thought my job was bad.”
    I hadn’t thought before that there might be things inside the unit that would tell Fernandez and his crime-scene techs more about the murder. Given that evidence and where it might be found, I didn’t want their job, either. Dot stood out on the driveway with the rest of us watching all this while Buck was tending to the kennels. “Does this mean that this is where you found Frank?” she asked.
    “It was. He was fully clothed and everything. It wasn’t like he’d been in there for the normal purposes. I think whoever it was that shot him put him in there to hide the evidence.”
    We didn’t say much more for a few minutes. Sam asked the driver a few more questions, and jotted down notes that I knew included what he’d overheard me tell Dot. I didn’t mind; he would ask me the same questions sooner or later anyway. Dot stood quite a few feet from me, watching silently, which was odd for her. Maybe Frank’s death had affected her more than I had thought. “I’m so sorry that this had to happen, Dot. Do you know how his wife is taking all this?”
    “I haven’t talked to her. We aren’t all that close. But I talked to one of Frank’s aunts, the one cousin in that bunch I usually talk to, and everybody’s shocked. Gathering from what she said, I think the biggest surprise is that nobody did this earlier. If I’d known before what a scoundrel Frank Collins was, I would never have insisted we hire him, even if he is family.”
    Whoops. That was a lot more information than I wanted, and I had no idea how to respond. Dot didn’t seem to need a response anyway. In fact, she stopped herself from saying any more. “I shouldn’t be talking, I expect. I’m supposed to go in to the sheriff’s department and talk to that detective later today, and he said not to say anything to anybody. Buck’s going with me and we’re both being fingerprinted.”
    “Ben and I are supposed to go do the same thing. Maybe we’ll meet you down there.”
    “Maybe so,” Dot said, with less enthusiasm than usual. She went back to the house as the man finished loading his “evidence” on the back of the flatbed truck. He got in the truck and pulled out of the driveway, and Sam turned his attention to me.
    “So you found the body, huh? And he was in what that guy just hauled away?” Sam had a look that said he didn’t know whether to laugh or shudder.
    “That about sums