John D MacDonald – Travis McGee 10 The Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper

“Explain the situation, will you?”

“Surely. If you’re not checking out, she’ll be coming by to say thank you tomorrow, I expect.” She paused at the door, fists in the pockets of her uniform skirt. “It’s important Cathy shouldn’t get fired, mister. She needs the job. She lives with her old mother, and that old woman is mean as a snake. All crippled up with arthritis. She about drove Cathy’s man away, I guess. There’s three little kids, and Cathy could manage all right on the job money, but she’ll see a dress and keep thinking about it until she just has to have it, no matter what, and she’ll put it on lay-away, and then she’ll have to use the money for other things at home, and she’ll be afraid she’ll lose the dress and what she paid on it, and then, well, she’ll take chances she wouldn’t otherwise and do things she wouldn’t otherwise. She’s older than me but lots of ways she’s like a kid. This place does a lot of commercial trade, and what she does, when you unlock a number and it’s a single in there, he’s maybe just waking up or he’s getting dressed, she gives a big smile and says something like good morning, sir, sure sorry if I disturbed you. And he looks her over and says, Honey, you come on right in here, and, well, she does. Then it’s ten dollars or twenty to keep from losing the dress, but she’s going to get caught someday and lose this good job. The reason I’m telling you all this is on account of from what I said about her messing around, I didn’t want you thinking she was nothing but a hustler. It’s only sometimes with her, and even if I wouldn’t go down that road, it doesn’t mean she isn’t no friend of mine. She’s my friend. She used to let me hold her first baby. I was ten years old and she was fifteen. And… thanks for coming and telling one of us.”

She left and I screwed the bottle cap tight and put the doctored-and watered-gin in my carry-on suitcase, wondering all the while if it wouldn’t be a sounder idea to pour it out.

D. Wintin Hardahee was with a client. I left the motel number and room number. He called back ten minutes later, at eleven o’clock.

“I was wondering if maybe I could scrounge a little more information from you, Mr. Hardahee.”

“I am very sorry, Mr. McGee, but my work load is very heavy.” The soft voice had a flat and dead sound.

“Maybe we could have a chat after you get through work.”

“I am not taking on any new clients at this time.”

“Is something the matter? Is something wrong?”

“Sorry I can’t be more cooperative. Good-bye, Mr. McGee.” Click.

I paced around, cursing. This nice orderly prosperous community was getting on my nerves. A big ball of tangled string. But when you found a loose end and pulled, all you got was a batch of loose ends. It seemed like at least a month ago that I had thought to check out Helena’s estate arrangements. I thought maybe Hardahee could work it through his New York classmate. But Hardahee wasn’t going to work out anything for me. So what could turn him off so quickly and so completely? Lies? Fear?

I stretched out on the bed and let the confusing cauldron bubble away, giving me glimpses of Penny, Janice, Biddy, Maureen, Tom Pike, Rick, Stanger, Tom Pike, Helena, Hardahee, Nudenbarger, Tom Pike.

Pike was getting pretty damned ubiquitous. And little bits of conversation kept coming back. I heard parts of the night talk with Janice Holton and something bothered me and I went back over it and found what bothered me, then slowly sat up.

She had asked about my imaginary wife. “Do you ever run into her? Is she still in Lauderdale?”

Review. I had not said one damned word about Lauderdale. Holton had checked the registration. So he knew. But was there any reason for him to have said word one about it to his wife? “Look, darling, my girl friend wanted to stay in the motel room with some jerk from Lauderdale named McGee.”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *