Read Zigzag for Free Online

some time. I could have my license suspended if I tried to mount an investigation of my own.”
    â€œCouldn’t you do something else for me?” The liquidy brown eyes added mute appeal to her words.
    â€œSuch as?”
    â€œTry to prove I’m right about the kind of man my husband was. Try to find out how he knew Floyd Mears, why he went to see him that night. That’s not the same thing as investigating the murders, is it?”
    â€œWell, technically, no, but—”
    â€œI’ll pay you whatever you ask until all the money I have runs out.”
    â€œIt’s not a matter of money, Mrs. Fentress. Or rather it is where you’re concerned. What you’re asking would likely be a fruitless undertaking and you’d be depleting your savings for nothing.”
    â€œI don’t care about my savings. You’re a detective, a good one according to what I’ve read; you have ways of finding things out. You could try, couldn’t you?” When I didn’t answer, she said with desperation rising in her voice, “I can’t stand living the rest of my life not knowing. Even if it turns out I’m wrong and Ray did intend to rob Mears, even if he was a … a killer after all, I’d rather know than not know. You understand?”
    All too well. I nodded.
    â€œThen please help me. Please try to find out.”
    Thankless job, nowhere job. Waste of her money, waste of my time. I’d have to notify Heidegger, get his permission for an offshoot investigation. I’d have to go poking into a dead ex-con’s life before and after his prison sentence with little enough hope of finding out something that would relieve Doreen Fentress’ burden of grief. I’d be a damn fool to make the effort. I’d be a damn fool to say yes, okay, I’ll see what I can do.
    â€œYes, okay,” I said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

 
    6
    Tamara didn’t think much of my decision, either. She’d been listening at the door, all right, and when Doreen Fentress was gone she came out of her office and admitted it. When I suggested that she could have waited to hear the gist of the conversation from me, she said, “Well, I was curious after the silent treatment she gave me. No secrets around here, right?”
    â€œNot when it comes to business, anyway.”
    â€œWhat’s that mean?”
    Whoops. Indirect reference to her recent disinclination to discuss her love life, which she’d always done before with casual candor and in more detail than I cared to know. But since she’d taken up again with her musician boyfriend, Horace Fields, after his return to the city following a failed near marriage, she hardly even mentioned his name. Maybe it was because she knew I had my doubts about the wisdom of hooking up with him again after the shabby way he’d treated her the first time around, but more likely it was because things weren’t going well between them. There’d been little indications that led me to suspect this was the case—grumpy mornings, puffy eyes indicating lack of sleep, long, brooding silences.
    But I hadn’t made any attempt to pry; it would only have created unnecessary friction between us. Even an oblique reference was a mistake on a day when she was in a more or less upbeat mood. None of my business anyway unless she brought up the subject or her relationship with Horace affected her work, which so far it hadn’t.
    â€œDoesn’t mean anything,” I said. “Just something irrelevant you say without thinking.”
    â€œSort of like a mouth fart.”
    I had to grin at that. “Sort of.”
    â€œWell, anyhow, it’s a good thing you didn’t make the Fentress woman any promises. Fifty-fifty the Sonoma sheriff’s department says stay out of it.”
    â€œMore like seventy-five twenty-five they’ll allow it. Lieutenant Heidegger didn’t strike me as a