Read Made to Kill for Free Online Page A

friend?”
    I looked around one more time. “No clue.”
    Ada sucked on her cigarette. I stood there and listened. “Okay, time to head home,” she said after a moment. “Looks like we’re going to need to sit tight on this one. She’ll call tomorrow, maybe we can get something more to chew on. And if nothing else, she’ll want the gold back when we tell her we’ve come up with a big fat zilch. But it’s her own fault.”
    I nodded to nobody. “Ada giving a refund? Don’t tell me you’re developing a conscience?”
    At that she laughed. A full three loops this time. “Hey, I didn’t say we would give it to her.”
    “Someone is going to want that gold back, whether it’s Mystery Girl or not.”
    “Right. And then we can ask them a few questions. This thing is starting to stink like week-old fish.”
    “Okay, I’m coming back,” I said, lowering my collar, adjusting my hat, and heading back up toward the sign and the little hut and the parking lot where I had left my car. I’d gone farther than I’d thought and finding the path back up was harder than finding it down.
    As I approached the lip of the little plateau I could hear the sound of trash being dumped. Must have been my friend from the Parks Department loading up his Parks Department truck. I kept on climbing and for a moment I wondered what bright-eyed pencil-pusher back at the office had decided on eye-popping green as the most suitable livery for their official vehicles. Then I slipped in the dirt and found myself going backwards for a foot or two before coming to a graceful halt.
    The sound from up ahead stopped. The ranger had heard me. I thought about calling out to say it was me, but as there was no one else on the hill I decided I could save my breath. So to speak.
    Then I heard something else. It was that ticking sound again, slow and steady. The sun and the hot tin roof of the hut. It sure was a beautiful day and I bet the man from the Parks Department was looking forward to clocking off the dusty hillside.
    I continued my ascent.
    When I got to the car the pick-up was there along with the hut, the door of which was open. The man from the Parks Department was rummaging inside for something as the roof over his head ticked and ticked and ticked.
    I took the window of opportunity and scooted around the back of the hut. It had been put up close to the embankment which supported the summit road above me, but there was room enough to squeeze in. There were some empty canvas sacks crumpled up and shoved out of sight. Some were covered with dust.
    But not all of them.
    I picked up the first one, then the second. They were recent additions. I kept digging until I reached the bottom. The soil there was the same yellowish pebble scree that covered the hills.
    The soil had been disturbed. It didn’t tax my skills of observation to see that there was a small area of dirt that was looser than the surrounds. Someone had been back here. Someone had hidden something.
    Someone like Charles David?
    I brushed the soil with my foot and about an inch below the surface I saw a black tag that could have been canvas. I reached down and pulled it, and pulled out a metal spike ten inches long and maybe four across. At the end opposite the point was a screw cap with a metal loop for the canvas tag.
    I stood up and looked at the spike and turned to head back to the car to give Ada a call. I stopped when I saw the man from the Parks Department standing at the corner of the hut with his hands on his hips.
    “You’d better be on your way, mister,” he said. “You can’t rightly be back here any more than you can be on the hill at all. Say, what’s that you got there?”
    I walked towards him, holding the spike out. Together we emerged into the sun and stared at the object as it lay across my bronzed steel palms.
    The man from the Parks Department swept the cap off his head with one hand, returned that hand to his hip, then peered at the spike with his nose an