Read Repairman Jack [03]-Conspiracies for Free Online

Spent a lot of time on her computer."
    "How about her car? What does she drive?"
    "An Audi. But I haven't gotten a call that it's been found anywhere."
    "No other contacts?" Jack said. He felt his frustration mounting. "What about family?"
    "Both her folks are dead. Her father died before we met, her mother died just last year. Mel was an only child so she inherited the house and everything in it. I keep telling her to sell it but—"
    "She has another house? Why didn't you tell me?"
    "I didn't think it was important. Besides, I searched the place just yesterday. She wasn't there. I've been there before, but never actually searched through it. I found something odd in the cellar, but—"
    "Odd? Odd how?"
    "In the cellar floor." He shrugged. "Nothing that would relate to Mel's disappearance."
    We're talking a very odd woman here, Jack thought. Two odds sometimes attract.
    "Can't hurt to look," he said, desperate for something to give him direction. "Where is it?"
    "It's a ways from here. A little town named Monroe."
    "Never heard of it."
    "It's near Glen Cove."
    "Great," Jack said. "Let's take a look."
    Not that he had much hope of finding anything useful, but this Monroe was back toward the city, and he had to head in that direction anyway.
    But if the Monroe house yielded as much as this place, he'd have to return Lew's down payment. This was going nowhere.
    Jack cast a final look at the painting at the far end of the study as he followed Lew down the stairway. His fingertips didn't hurt any longer—must have been something sharp within the paint; it simply had felt like a bite—but damn if they didn't still feel wet. Weird.

6

    Monroe turned out to be a Gold Coast town, smaller and prettier than Shoreham. It had a picturesque harbor, for one thing, and no room for a nuclear plant. Jack guessed from the faux whaling-village facades on the harbor area shops and buildings that the town must do a fair amount of tourist trade in the summer. A little early for that now. Traffic was minimal as he followed Lew's Lexus through the downtown area, then uphill past the brick-fronted town hall and library, the white steepled church—a real postcard of a town. He trailed him past rows of neat colonials, then came to a development of mostly two- and three-bedroom postwar ranch houses.
    Lew pulled into the driveway of a house that wasn't so well-kept. Its clapboard siding needed a fresh coat of paint; last fall's leaves clogged the gutters; dark green onion grass sprouted in the weedy, anemic, threadbare lawn. A detached garage sat to the right. A huge oak dominated a front yard that was unusually large for the neighborhood—looked like half an acre or better.
    Jack parked Abe's truck at the curb and met Lew at the front door.
    "Why does she keep this place?" Jack asked.
    "Sentimental reasons, I guess," Lew said, searching through his key ring. "I've wanted her to sell it, or maybe even subdivide the lot. Be worth a pretty penny, but she keeps putting it off. She grew up here. Spent most of her life in this house."
    Jack felt a chill as they paused on the front stoop. He looked around uneasily. They were standing in the deep shadow cast by the massive oak's trunk as it hid the late afternoon sun. That had to be it.
    Lew opened the door and they stepped into the dark, slightly mildewy interior. He turned on a light and together they wandered through the two-bedroom ranch.
    Jack noted that the place was filled with pictures of Melanie at various ages—birthdays and graduations, mostly; no sports or dancing school shots—and always that Must -you-take-my-picture? expression. The walls of her old bedroom were still hung with framed academic achievement certificates. A bright child, and obviously cherished by her folks.
    "Where's this 'odd' something you mentioned?" Jack said.
    "Down in the basement. This way."
    Through the tiny kitchen, down a narrow set of stairs to an unfinished basement. Lew stopped at the bottom of the steps and pointed at