Vineyard Blues Read Online Free PDF Page A

course.”
    â€œMaybe I’ll be able to identify this man right away.”
    â€œThat would probably end your troubles with him.”
    â€œYes.” Her mind seemed far ahead of her mouth. She looked at me. “Will you help me?”
    I was surprised. I’d thought the advice I’d given her was the help she’d come for.
    â€œHow?” I asked.
    â€œIf I find out who it is, I want you to talk to him.” She glanced at the door. “I don’t want Warren to know about this. You were a policeman. You know how to talk to these people. I want you to do it. Will you?”
    There is no escaping the plague rats. They’re always close by, even in Eden.
    â€œIf you find him, I’ll talk to him,” I said.
    â€œThank you.” She gave a small smile. “I feel a lot better.” She stood up. “I’ll go save your wife from my children.” She put out her hand.
    â€œI haven’t done anything yet.” I held her hand for an extra heartbeat and said, “There’s one thing you should keep in mind: When you turn over rocks, you sometimes find things you don’t expect. If we do this, things may come to light that you might not anticipate or want to know.”
    â€œYou and I will be the only ones who know it,” she said. “I’m going to trust you.”
    As I followed her out into the yard, I thought of the old, familiar saying that two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.

—  4  —
    I was more of a two-by-four carpenter than a cabinet-maker, but if I took my time I could make things fit. The key word was
time
. I needed more of it than a real carpenter would need, but I didn’t have enough money to hire a pro to help, so the new wing to our house was progressing at a fairly sedate rate. My plan was to have it done by fishing derby time in September, so I was working at it pretty steadily. When I got it finished, not only would the kids have their own rooms, but the room they now shared would once more be available for our occasional guests, such as Brady Coyne and Quinn, who planned to come down and do some derby fishing.
    Because Zee was back at work at the emergency ward of the hospital and thus was gone when she had the day shift, I often had the children to tend while I was working. Since many women, most, maybe, have to do their work with their children underfoot, I didn’t feel any grounds for complaint, but I, like the moms, had to keep one eye on my offspring while I tended to other things.
    Toward this end, I’d built a sort of corral for Diana in the backyard beside the addition I was putting up, so she wouldn’t wander too far. Josh, being older, liked to help me with the building some of the time, so he got to be outside of the fence and wear his own little carpenter’s apron and wield his minihammer when the notion took him. I sawed and hammered carefully when he was helping me, and when he tired of the building biz, I’d put him in with Diana and let them entertain themselves while I kept working.
    As stay-at-home parents have always done, I sometimes wondered what miracles I might perform if I had a baby-sitter. On the other hand, as many of those other parents would probably also agree, I didn’t want a baby-sitter tending my little ones all day. Even Mary Poppins would have been only a part-time employee at our place. I’d lived a long time without children, and I wanted to watch them grow up now that I had some.
    So the new wing of the house went up slowly, as I stretched my money and split my attention between carpentry and kids.
    Today, however, Zee was off work and was taking advantage of her free time to do some serious momming, so I was able to concentrate on construction. While I did, I thought about Susanna Quick and the computer-generated photo of her as Oriona in bondage.
    I had encountered people in various forms of the sex industry when I was a cop in