Free Ask the Dice by Ed Lynskey

with the same negative results.
    "Where else do we search?" he asked.
    There was no furniture, mirrors, or bookcases for her to use as a cache hole. Then I saw a new-looking business card had been Scotch-taped to the side of the gas furnace, and I leaned in closer to make out the fine print: Boyce Randall, Service Technician .
    "Randall just serviced her furnace," I said, jacking a thumb over my shoulder to indicate the business card.
    "Strike him from your list," said Esquire.
    "That leaves me with Rita Ogg and Uncle Watson."
    Esquire tugged off the brass dusters, spat on their rounded edges, and rubbed off the drywall gunk on his other hand. "There never was a lot of doubt in your mind who framed you for Gwen's murder, was there?"
    "I held on to a sliver of doubt because I didn't want to accept it's my boss. We've laid a lot of track together."
    "Sorry to ruin your night, sweetheart. I better get on back to Hermes."
    “Call him.”
    “I’ll be home soon enough.”
    I trotted Esquire back to the auto upholstery shop and let him off. He suggested I stay at a motel. Mr. Ogg had stationed his dark suits on my block, licking their chops for me to blunder into their ambush. But after I left Esquire I nixed the motel idea. Mr. Ogg had sent out the word to the scores of his spies on the streets, and all it took was one to spot me, and the spy to whip out his cell phone. I had a different idea in mind. Camping out in the coupé wasn't new. Jaunting out of the city for a few days to fulfill Mr. Ogg's contracts often found me on stakeouts where the rear seat became a bed for catching naps.
    I wasn't sold on where it was safe to park. A cul-de-sac or a pipe stem in a quiet neighborhood tempted me, but then a wary homeowner might question seeing a strange coupé parked at the curb. Or a moonlit jogger chugging by might spot a black man snoozing in the rear seat and use a cell phone to alert a beat patrol to check it out. A better place was the old switchyard lying deserted as Death Valley .
     
    T he entrance I turned into voided to a corral of steel rails crisscrossing in the bright cones to my streaming headlights. Beyond their immediate range loomed the rectangular hulk to what I took as a boxcar. So, I nosed my way into the corral until the coupé's front tires bumped up against the first span of tracks, blocking my further progress.
    My headlights died with the engine, and I stretched out, doing my best to relax. The window down let in the April night hush since the raucous insects hadn't yet hatched out. Once I thought I heard the soulful call of the hoot owl. The ghoulish specter of Gwen Ogg, nude and inert, behind my eyes mashed shut refused to disappear. A bitter irony gnawed at me. Her corpse out of the scores I'd left strewn in my wake was the one that buried me. How did you like that?
    My rooting around behind my seat found Mr. Ogg's manila envelope. I lifted the flap, drew out the materials inside, and aimed the map light to beam down on them. What I found on the sheets of paper bore out my worst suspicion. The copy read like the rap sheet to a small-time hood named "John Doe" who happened to reside at Gwen's townhouse address. My barked out laugh was a hollow one.
    I was a fool. Mr. Ogg had suckered me into going to her townhouse where I supposedly shot her dead. Who else was handier to play his fall guy? His betrayal stung me harder, and I trembled, still wanting not to believe it. But my denying the obvious here would land me tucked in a coffin like Gwen's. My palsied hands quivered as my palms sweated at the creases. I chucked the manila envelope over my shoulder and switched off the map light. By the next minute, a lit Blue Castle glowered between my jittery fingers. I puffed with renewed vigor. The nicotine sedated my anxiety to stay here and not streak off in a wild ass panic. Music also placated me, so I gave the ignition key a twist, powered on the coupé's AM radio, and relaxed.
    As a kid I'd carried a sky blue