Too Sweet to Die by Ron Goulart, Llc Ebook Architects

completely out of Montez’s grasp. Then he grabbed the private secretary up by his cable-stitch ski sweater.
    Montez’s poodle-colored wig had fallen off and he touched at his empty head before he tried to throw a punch.
    Easy caught Montez’s arm and levered him around. He tossed the hairless private secretary across the front seat of the car. Then he whipped Montez’s belt out of its loops and tied his hands behind his back.
    “You’ll be repaid in full for this nastiness,” warned Montez, his thin face against the passenger seat’s cream-colored upholstery.
    “Who have you got with you?”
    “Piss on you,” replied Montez.
    “How long have you been shooting up the lodge?”
    “A half hour or more,” said Montez. “That creep Dr. Ingraham is in there. I recognized his sanitarium station wagon. He’s being very unreasonable. Won’t let us get near enough to negotiate.”
    “He’s got Jill with him,” Easy said.
    The prone Montez shrugged. “That’s a matter of supreme indifference to me, Mr. Easy. Now the old man is dead I don’t give a damn for that little bitch. What we came up here for was to gather together some of the senator’s personal papers.”
    “Which include several hundred thousand dollars in cash.”
    Montez stayed silent for a few seconds. “Yes, there is a small amount of cash kept in the lodge.”
    “Big enough to attract Ingraham.”
    “That little creep,” repeated Montez. “He’s fouling up everything. It was the senator’s last wish that I take charge of the money and use it as I see fit.”
    “Uh huh.” Easy closed the private secretary in the car.
    Easy circled the ice-blue Cadillac, then headed in among the burl-trunked laurels. He got two kinds of rain in among the high thick trees. Rain falling directly down and rain the wind kept shaking from the branches.
    The lodge was two stories high. The lower level was finished in stone, the upper was redwood planking. A wooden porch ran all around the house at the second-floor level, with wide rough steps leading up to it from the ground level. The land for several hundred yards surrounding the lodge was cleared, a sandy stretch of earth. The front of the hideaway faced the road and almost immediately behind it was a small dark lake.
    Ducked behind the last of the trees at the summit of the hillside slope, Easy noticed five floodlights had been mounted around the front and side of the house. Four of them were smashed out now. As he watched, the fifth light exploded into sharp fragments.
    The shot had come from a rifle off to the far right. That must be Montez’s other man, concealed in the woods on the far side of the road.
    A rifle barrel was poked out of a second-floor window and a shot was sent in the general direction of Montez’s sidekick.
    “There’s Ingraham,” said Easy.
    There was a high red brick fireplace on that side of the house. Easy guessed the doctor was in the living room of the lodge, probably moving from the front to the side windows. That would allow him to cover the end of the road and a good part of the laurel forest which faced the house.
    With all his floodlights gone Ingraham wouldn’t do as well.
    Easy moved quietly to his left. In his pocket he carried the ring of keys Mrs. Cuidera had given him. “The front door might be a little risky,” he said. “But the wine cellar looks possible.”
    He kept working his way away from the Nordlin lodge. Dr. Ingraham and Montez’s man were still exchanging occasional shots. A side window suddenly smashed to shards.
    Easy left the cover of the laurels and side-footed down the hillside. He stopped at the lake and looked back toward the lodge. Beside him the hard rain was chopping at the water of the lake.
    The wine-cellar door was whitewashed and it glowed faintly through the rain. Keeping low to the ground, Easy jogged toward it.
    At the door he was sheltered by the overhang of the porch. Rain thumped on it. Easy got out the keys in a cupped hand and