Read Joyride for Free Online Page B

today and didn’t call in. Says this is very unusual for the gentleman. She’s been trying his condo and his car phone all day. Nothing. So I figured…”
    “You figured you could hit me with this sack of shit while you go out for lunch. Why’s anybody bothering with this, anyway? How long’s he been missing, four hours? Christ, I know the guy. He’s rich and spoiled and he’ll fuck anything that doesn’t walk on all fours. Forget the wife. Check his cocktail waitresses. Hold on a minute.”
    He turned to Marty. Cupped his hand over the mouthpiece.
    “Is somebody waiting outside?”
    Marty was sitting again. He’d lit up a Marlboro. Rule liked that about the man. He never smoked during sessions, but he did before and after. You smelled it when you walked into the room. If you minded the smoke, you got yourself another therapist. Simple as that.
    Marty nodded. “Yes. Take your time, though.”
    He knew that was bullshit. For Marty more than most people time was definitely money.
    “All right,” Rule said into the phone. “I’ll go out there. But I’m putting this on your tab, understand me?”
    “Sure, Joe.”
    He hung up the phone.
    “Thanks, Marty. I’ll call you when I know what the rest of the week looks like, okay?”
    “Fine.” He got up and opened the door. “How’s the dolls’ house coming?”
    In his spare time, such as it was, Rule was building Chrissie a dollhouse, working out in his garage. He had been for over a year now, since long before the two of them had left Vermont. He saw no reason to stop now that he and Ann were quits. It hadn’t been Chrissie’s idea.
    Though how in hell he was going to pack it up eventually and ship it out to her was a little beyond him. The damn thing weighed a ton.
    “Exterior’s finished. I’m papering the walls and laying in the molding.”
    In fact his work on the house was two bedrooms and a second-floor hallway from completion. For some reason he didn’t feel like telling Marty that.
    “I’ll call you,” he said.
    The drive to Barstow was normally only ten minutes straight up 100 North. But they finally had a warm clear day so there were summer tourists out doing what tourists did, antiquing, admiring the scenery, heading for the resorts along Mount Haggarty. License plates from New York, Florida, and Massachusetts dawdled ahead of him. It was nothing like ski season or even the fall foliage season but it slowed him down a little.
    He had time to admire the mountain the Abnaki Indians had called Mose-de-be-Wadso—Head Like a Moose—braced with cumulus clouds. Rule had never really seen the moose there. He didn’t figure he was missing anything. He thought that a moose ranked right up withthe anteater as one of the ugliest animals that ever lived and that the mountain was much prettier than that.
    He went straight through the blinking light at the center of town, turned right at Snow’s grocery and began to climb.
    The road didn’t look like much at first but that was deceptive. If you lived up here you were talking a quarter million in property minimum, even with the damn Republicans and the economy kicking hell out of housing. As you climbed the homes got bigger, the parcels of land more extensive. The Gardner place was about three-quarters of the way up. Which meant that Carole Gardner was looking at about two and a half million and change in real estate alone.
    Rule didn’t ordinarily sympathize much with somebody worth that kind of money but in the case of Carole Gardner he’d already made an exception.
    The woman had married the Real Estate Mogul From Hell.
    There was no other way to put it. The man was arrogant, drunk, and abusive. Into knives and guns and kinky sex. Often together.
    Howard Gardner considered himself an aristocrat.
    Rule recalled him vividly. He’d had the pleasure of serving him a restraining order—then later of prying him off her lawn, loaded, early one morning. Then still later, of arresting him.
    From what