Free The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven by Joseph Caldwell Page B

Maude McCloskey’s husband maybe coming back, so she’s changed her mind about her own roof. But the next thing I think I understood—if I got any of it right—was Kitty telling Kieran after the guy left, ‘He sees our pig the same as we do.’ Whatever that might mean.”
    â€œNo more about the pig if you don’t mind. Are you ready for the real truth?”
    â€œProbably not. But go ahead.”
    â€œThat was Declan Tovey. In the flesh I might add.”
    â€œOh? And now who’s deranged?”
    â€œI knew it was Declan the minute he stepped out of his truck.”
    â€œYou mean your Declan was the only thatcher who could drive a truck?”
    â€œTry not to be quite so smart.”
    â€œI’m trying to stay sane. Next you’ll be back to telling me it was his ghost.”
    â€œIt wasn’t his ghost. Ghosts don’t smell. At least not like Declan Tovey. I’d know that smell anywhere. It’s like … it’s like …” She stopped, unable to go further.
    His expression gone deliberately blank, Aaron turned and looked at his wife. “Like what?”
    â€œLike Declan Tovey,” she said quietly.
    Tempted to ask how she had become so familiar with the scent of the man’s flesh, he resisted. He’d resort to the obvious, to the question that now had to be asked. “Then who was that who took my best shirt with him to the bottom of the sea?”
    â€œI haven’t the slightest. Probably someone Declan murdered and put in with the cabbages. Who knows?”
    â€œAren’t you even interested in finding out?”
    â€œI gave up a long time ago trying to know or even to speculate on the doings of Mr. Tovey. But he must have done something that makes him go looking to see where his handiwork went, haunting around the old place on the cliffs that made us think he was a ghost.”
    â€œNot ‘us.’ You.”
    â€œSame thing.”
    â€œIf you say so.”
    â€œI just did.”
    â€œFine. But why would he murder someone?”
    â€œHow can you not know that? He was jealous.”
    â€œOf who?”
    â€œOf whom. I was a writer once, don’t forget.”
    â€œAll right. Of whom?”
    â€œAsk him.”
    â€œSo he’s capable of killing someone because he’s jealous?”
    â€œWell, I would hope so.”
    After an extended pause, Aaron said, “You don’t think he … well … he’s jealous of … well … of me, do you?”
    â€œAsk him.”
    â€œAm I allowed to suspect he might have a reason to be jealous?”
    â€œYou’re allowed to do anything you want. You’re an adult.”
    â€œIncluding thinking he might murder me?”
    â€œAsk him.”
    â€œThe idea doesn’t … well … disturb you?”
    A small smile came to Lolly’s face. “All right, then, I’ll ask him myself. And if he says yes, I’ll do anything I possibly can to persuade him not to. Does that satisfy you?” After a quick giggle, she leaned toward her husband and pecked his cheek.
    Aaron turned to look at his wife. Her smile had broadened and the glint in her eyes intensified as it was refracted from the windshield, making her enviable auburn hair seem even more lustrous. Never had he seen her as beautiful as she was at this present moment. But he was no longer quite so sure he was that pleased that his wife had regained all her mirth.
    Added to his unease that a fully fleshed Declan Tovey had now come among them was the unavoidable revelation that his wife was not, as she had claimed at the skeleton’s wake, the one and only murderer of the then presumed thatcher stretched out in the coffin before her. Instead of being relieved to discover that the most beautiful woman in the world, now seated next to him, was innocent, he was given the realization that this latest truth was merely prologue to yet another: He had not married