Sleep with the Fishes (19 page)

I couldn’t imagine Sprunty hadn’t heard me enter. Surely when he was finished slipping the wood to that cheerleader he’d come looking for me. He wouldn’t want to keep his appraiser waiting long. I might get testy.

After half an hour of looking for the least objectionable mutt, I was getting impatient. If I had a cell phone, I would have called somebody. The bear arm was beginning to worry me too. Why would Sprunty cut the arm off his own bear mount, and right before an appraisal? Was it possible he’d cut it off somebody else’s trophy on a wager or something?

Weary of the delay, I determined to barge in on them. Half an hour was long enough for him to have done what he needed to do. Now they were probably just in there having cosmos and cheese curls or something.

I pushed through the door at the far end of the pantry. When the door swung closed behind me, I was in darkness, awash in ripples of aquamarine, enveloped in the hushed silence of wall-to-wall carpeting. Across a sizeable room and beyond a gargantuan sectional sofa was a large array of sliding glass doors leading to a patio and lighted pool. That’s it—they must be out by the pool.

But moments later I was outside standing next to the blue glow of the pool. No Sprunty. No cheerleader. No panties. Just the frogs and crickets chirping away.

I walked back through the sliding doors and felt along the wall for a light switch. Suddenly, Sprunty’s trophy room blazed all around me. I could see that it extended almost the full width of the house, with dark paneled walls, white cathedral ceilings, white wall-to-wall shag, and white upholstered furniture.

Fulmore certainly had bragging rights. The pieces on the wall were mostly exotic, many full-bodied, and few of them small. A brooding black cape buffalo the size of a Cooper Mini was parked in one corner, a gnu at full gallop charging out from another. Along one wall, three rows of gazelle heads were arranged by size like some taxonomic display. There were mountain goats standing on fake rocks in the room’s center, a lion jumping a Grants gazelle beyond that. Elk, moose, and rhino up there, an eight-hundred-pound black marlin up over there. A snarling polar bear clawed the air to the left of the stone fireplace, a cougar jumped a pronghorn by the bar, and a wolf gnashed its teeth over the door. It was like one of those sporting goods megastores. Taxidermy overkill. Or just plain overkill.

My eyes finally locked onto the Kodiak bear, which was standing in the corner to my right, his elbows stirring the air. Both forearms were missing, and I only held one of them in my hand. What kinda nut cuts both the arms off of his own trophy?

The Kodiak was helping the polar bear flank the fireplace on the far side of a large sectional couch. To get there, I sauntered around behind the sectional, around the mountain goats, and in front of the bar. Ahead I saw something red.

Ah, the panties. I reached down to pick them up.

But what I encountered was wet. It was two dimensional. It was a stain.

My eyes swam—it must be red paint, cranberry juice, grenadine, Campari, raspberry syrup…but then the metallic bite of blood stung my nose.

I found my back pressed against the front of the bar, my hand reaching for the phone next to the beer taps. Fumble: Carson knocks the whole phone off the bar and onto the floor behind it.

“Nine one one, nine one one…” I was afraid I might forget the number as I stumbled behind the bar in search of the phone.

I stumbled, all right.

Onto Sprunty.

He’d been mauled by a bear. How’d I know? Sure, those gashes in his chest could have been made by a knife. But Fulmore’s intestines were wrapped around the Kodiak’s missing arm.

There was blood everywhere, and I almost slipped as I reached for the phone next to his head. I was averting my eyes from the gore, my breath coming fast, grunting with disgust, when I grabbed Sprunty by the nose by accident. His eyes, thankfully, were mostly closed. But his mouth was open. Something white was sticking out of it. A lizard? No, a gecko, probably a common house gecko. Dead too? I didn’t know, I didn’t care.

I grasped the phone and wheeled back around to the other side of the bar, falling to my knees on the clean white carpet. I misdialed three times before I got it right.

That was the day Sprunty’s problems became mine.

SLEEP WITH THE FISHES
A Dell Book / October 2006

Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved
Copyright © 2006 by Brian M. Wiprud

Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

www.bantamdell.com

eISBN: 978-0-440-33633-4

v3.0