Dipped, Stripped, and Dead Read Online Free Page B

didn’t wave at anyone but Ben.
    I was conscious of Ben’s messages on my cell phone in the purse on the floor of the passenger seat, but I had to get away from the smell before I listened to any messages. I drove carefully out of the parking lot, through the crowd of policemen, who got out of the way. Some looked toward Officer Wolfe, who waved as if to say that I was free to go.
    Over the bump and onto the tree-lined downtown street, and then down that and around the corner onto Fairfax Avenue. My house was eight blocks down it and then a sharp right on Quicksilver.
    Fairfax was a busy street, the east-west artery of the town. I pulled into the parking lot of a drugstore and got my phone out of my purse. It was not normal for Ben to call me on Saturday morning, certainly not two times in what seemed to be half an hour or less.
    Les Howard, Ben’s live-in lover, was a French horn player at the symphony downtown, and Friday night was usually concert night, which meant that they stayed up late, of necessity. The earliest I heard from Ben these days on Saturday was midafternoon, when he usually did call, keeping up a habit from our high school days of each finding out how the week had gone with the other. Even while I’d been married to All-ex, we’d kept it up. It was one of All-ex’s big all-time complaints, as if he really were in any danger from Ben. And I kept it up now, too, even though, frankly, I could be fonder of his boyfriend— partner seemed all too final, and Ben hadn’t done anything
bad enough to deserve that. I could be fonder of Les Howard, for instance, if it had been his body I’d found back there.
    But this thought brought with it an all-too-clear image of the body, and I shook my head. No. I didn’t wish that on anyone. And besides, I had nothing really against Les, except the way he looked at me and the suspicion that he wasn’t making Ben very happy.
    Ben and I had been friends since we were twelve, when he’d rescued me after I’d gotten in over my head in a fight with playground bullies. It would take more than our truly despicable taste in men to break that.
    As I thought that, I was dialing my messages, and I got Ben’s voice, crisp, clipped, over the phone. “Dyce? Why aren’t you answering at either phone? Where are you? Call me.”
    It didn’t sound particularly urgent, but something about it disquieted me. I erased the message and listened to the next. And became far more worried. Ben’s voice had lost the patented, almost inhuman calm he seemed to think was necessary when leaving a phone message. “Dyce! Oh, for the love of—” I didn’t know for whose love it was, because the next word was slurred. And then, in growing annoyance, “Dyce, answer the damn phone now. Where are you? Would you please answer and tell Les that I—Les, would you please ?”
    The connection ended. I opened my mouth, closed it, and looked at the dashboard, at Officer Cas Wolfe’s card. But what was I going to tell him? That I thought Ben had had some sort of domestic scene, what . . . an hour and a half ago? Yes, that would be helpful.
    And the thing was that the idea of a domestic disturbance between Ben and Les would strike people as either funny or Ben’s fault. Les was all of five-five, maybe five-six, elegantly slim, with the sort of build that seemed made for the tuxes he wore to work, while Ben was six-three
and built like an assault tank, and he kept slim only through strenuous and continuous exercise. Any policeman seeing Ben and Les fight would immediately arrest Ben for assault.
    And besides, Ben didn’t fight with people as such. Even when we met—I’d been involved in trying to punish two bullies at once and had momentarily forgotten that they were eighth graders and a year older than I and probably singly outweighed me by double—he’d walked up and punched the bullies out, and asked me if I was all right. Then he’d dusted his clothes—which didn’t need it—and introduced