Free The Lighthouse: A Novel of Terror by Marcia Muller Bill Pronzini Page B

the same dog and let him have it.”
    “That’s no damn reason . . . ”
    “Not for you and me, it sin’t.”
    Mitch hadn’t been trying to keep his voice down; everybody else in the Sea Breeze had heard him too. Seth Bonner got off his stool and came over halfway and said, “Plain dirt meanness, that’s what it was. Looked at me once like he wanted to kill me, too. Crazy California queer. We don’t want his kind around here!”
    He was getting himself worked up, but Mitch wasn’t paying any attention to him. Nobody was except Barney Nevers. Barney said, “Pipe down, Seth, will you?”
    “Don’t have to do what you tell me,” Bonner said.
    “You want me to ring up Emma?”
    Old Seth said, “Wouldn’t do that,” but he went back to his stool and sat down.
    Adam said, “What’d you do, Mitch? Go after him?”
    “No. Too late for that.”
    “What, then?”
    “Took Red up to the house and called the sheriff.”
    “What’d he say?” Hod asked.
    “Said there wasn’t much he could do. Said I didn’t see the whole thing, said it was dark and easy to make a mistake about intent. Said Ryerson could claim he didn’t know he hit Red and that was why he didn’t stop, and you couldn’t prove otherwise.” Mitch whacked his thighs again and his next words came out bitter. “Said it just ain’t much of a crime to hit-and-run a dog.”
    “You could swear out a complaint anyway,” Barney Nevers said from behind the plank. “Malicious mischief or something.”
    “Sheriff said that too.”
    “You going to do it?” Hod asked.
    “No. No damn point in it. Law ain’t worth a shit when it comes to this kind of thing.” Mitch sat heavily against one corner of the pool table. “Hod,” he said, “get me a drink, will you? Double shot of sour mash.”
    “Sure. Sure thing, Mitch.”
    Hod went to the bar, paid Barney Nevers for a double Jack Daniel’s—cost him his last dollar but the hell with that—and brought it back. Mitch drank it off neat. Then he made the shot glass disappear inside his big fist; squeezed on it, real tight, like he was trying to break it. His face had a funny dark look, a look Hod had never seen before.
    “That son of a bitch,” Mitch said. His voice was funny and dark like this face. “He ain’t going to get away with murdering Red.”
    Adam was cradling his cue stick again, rifle-like. He asked, “What’re you gonna do, Mitch?”
    “I don’t know yet,” Mitch said. “But I’ll do something, you mark me plain on that. Ryerson just ain’t going to get away with it.”

Alix
     
    Lang’s Gallery and Gifts housed one of the worst collections of pseudo-art Alix had ever seen.
    The space itself was pleasant: a large rectangular room with white walls and polished wood floors. Natural light poured in through a huge central skylight. But the cool simplicity of the place was spoiled by the objects offered for sale.
    To the left of the front door was a three-foot-high raised platform, also painted white, displaying a group of driftwood birds. Each was composed of a single piece of wood, perched on spindly coathanger legs. Beady eyes, which were actually bits of broken glass, stared blankly. The beaks were made of bluish-black mussel shells; the wings of seagull feathers, several of which made the birds look as if they were molting. Alix shook her head and turned to the right, where a similar platform held a collection of items made from shells. Some of these weren’t bad: simple, gracefully formed nautiluses and conches—undoubtedly ordered from a supplier rather than plucked from the hazardous local beaches—mounted on plain wooden bases. Others, however, were standard tourist fare: coasters and trays with shells laminated under plastic; abalone-shell ashtrays; oven-proof dishes made from what a clam had once called home. A larger, taller central platform directly under the skylight held other grotesqueries: driftwood lamps with hideous pleated shades; ceramic sea lions and