Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery by R.M. Wild (top 100 novels of all time .TXT) 📕

“Is that so?”

“Did you really ask about me? Back then, I had a mouth full of metal, glasses thicker than skyscraper windows, and shoulders that could hold an elephant.”

“I absolutely asked. I figured someone who was so into books might have a thing or two to show me about things that the rest of us take for granted.”

“I can’t tell if you’re complimenting me or yourself.”

He laughed. “So many things in life we take for fact, when in truth, we have no direct evidence. Take my heart for example,” Kendall said. “All the books and hundreds of years of medical research tell me I that have a heart, right? I probably do, given that I can feel something beating inside my chest. If I were a betting man, I’d bet good money that if you were to cut me open, you’d find a heart inside my ribs, but the reality is that I’ve gone my entire life believing I have a heart without actually knowing it for sure. It’s the same way with ninety-five percent of the things we think we know. Like gravity. A spherical earth, you name it. When you get down to it, believing the things you read is really an act of faith.”

I didn’t know if he was being incredibly profound or unfathomably stupid. “I never thought about it like that.”

“The people who claim to know the most are really the most trusting. Serious readers are the ultimate believers.”

I sighed and looked out the window. At some point in a woman’s life, a point that I was apparently on the verge of crossing, she stops reading arty books and watching arthouse films and she loses her patience for the arteests who spend their lives delving into the unknowable mysteries of the universe. At that point, she begins to crave nothing more than mindless entertainment. Maybe the turn comes about because she’s tired of all the suffering she’s seen. After thirty years of hard work and broken dreams, maybe all she wants are happy endings.

Whatever the case, her fascination with armchair philosophy gets sucked right out the window. As smart as Kendall might have been, I suddenly missed Mettle’s inane banter. Deeply.

“Did you grow up in Maine?” I asked to change the subject.

“Ayuh,” he said, putting on a fake Down East accent. “I moved to New York for a few years after high school, went to Columbia, got a great job with a great client, but then felt a hankering for the past and moved back to Maine for a simpler life.”

“You call this simple?”

“Compared to some of things I had to do in New York, yes,” he said.

“Your client must have had deep pockets.”

Kendall turned and grinned. “You know that they say about men with deep pockets?”

“I have no idea.”

“They can hold a lot of balls.”

I shifted uncomfortably.

“It’s a billiard reference. You know, like pockets on a pool table?”

“It’s very funny,” I said. “Even funnier when you explain it.”

“Sorry, I’m a better hitter than a pitcher,” he said.

Boy, I missed Matt Mettle.

A few minutes after the digits in the dashboard rearranged themselves into 4:00 a.m., we pulled off the single lane road and drove down a long, winding driveway.

I twisted to see behind us. There had been no mailbox at the entrance on the road and the woods on either side of us were thick and twisted.

“This is a vacation home I picked up a little bit ago,” Kendall said. “I got it real cheap. Two hundred acres of solitude for a hundred thousand bucks. No one will ever find you here.”

I shifted in my seat. “Ever?”

“You know what I mean.”

We drove through the woods for about a mile and then we came to a vast clearing. In the moonlight, the grass was tall and deeply green, the field bumpy with tiny hillocks. The borders of the clearing were all deeply wooded and there were no dwellings in sight except for a small, modern cabin sitting atop a hill, its roof blue-green with solar panels.

Behind the cabin, a path led down to a dark lake, the morning fog thick as cotton balls and hovering heavily, obscuring the farthest banks.

“She’s a beauty, right? Once I saw her, I had to have her,” Kendall said.

I hoped he was talking about the cabin.

“I don’t know how much you’re into the outdoors, but this baby is anything but rustic. You’ll love her. A real getaway.”

The way he talked about “her” reminded me of Captain Herrick and his boat. I wondered what Kendall had named the cabin. The Girl with the Pearl Ceiling? And why did men always refer to things they owned and controlled as she?

The driveway led right up to the front door. The cabin had wood siding, but the door was all glass, very sleek and very modern.

Kendall parked. A light automatically came on over the driveway.

“Motion sensors. High tech security. If anybody’s coming, we’ll know it right away. There are cameras up near the roof. I can watch everything from my phone.”

He rocked onto one butt cheek, pulled his phone out of his tight pockets, and tapped a few buttons.

The front door beeped and unlocked itself.

“Remote entry. Pretty cool, right? You’ll be safe here,” he said. He got out and motioned for me to go inside. “After you.”

I got out and walked hesitantly up to the front door, the reflection of my hair in the glass a big splotch of red. The moment I stepped over the threshold, the living room lit up.

Kendall came in behind me. “The house senses your whereabouts and adjusts the lights accordingly. It’s all solar powered.”

He passed me and headed straight for the kitchen, the lights flicking on ahead of him as he crossed the hardwood floor. In the kitchen, he grabbed a glass from one of the cabinets and filled it with water from the stainless steel refrigerator.

“Water?”

“Thank you,” I said. I accepted the glass and drank deeply. It tasted clean and pure.

“Can