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

“Fifty pound?”

Even with that dusky skin her sudden furious blush was apparent. “It’s nothing, mister. Anyplace like this, sooner or later somebody’ll give the boss gal some kind of special name. The one they give me, it comes from the way I’m built, that’s all. Somebody saw me walk by and said, `There she go. Ninety pound of mean. Forty pound of gal and fifty pound of boobs.’ So it’s Fifty Pound. Used to fuss me, but I don’t mind now.”

“See what you can find out, Lorette, about a man who works for the sheriff. Dave Broon.”

She looked as if she wanted to spit. “Now, that one is all mean. Mr. Holton, he’s part-time mean. Mr. Broon, he wants to know something, maybe a deputy picks up some boy out in Southtown and then Mr. Broon visits with him. When they bring the boy back, he walks old and he talks old, and he keeps his head down. But he doesn’t say a thing about Mr. Broon. One thing I know, he’s rich. Big rich. It’s in other names but he owns maybe forty houses in Southtown. Rains through the roof. Porch steps fall off. Three families drawing water from one spigot, but the rent never goes down. It goes up. Cardboard paper on the busted windows. Tax goes up on other places, never goes up on Mr. Broon’s houses.”

“You told me that the Holtons couldn’t get domestic help because of Holton’s attitude toward your people. I know that Mr. Pike and Miss Pearson have been trying to get somebody to look after Mrs. Pike. I noticed they have the yard work done by a white man. Any special reason for that?”

She stood by the door and all expression had left her face. “It’s something went on long ago, three years, maybe more, just after that house was built and him new married. Had a live-in couple quartered over the boat-house. Young couple. Good pay. They drank some kind of poison stuff that you spray on the groves. Para… para…”

“Parathion?”

“Sounds right. Both died in the hospital. Mr. Pike paid for a nice funeral.”

“Accident?”

“Not with the bag right there on the floor next to the table and the powder still stuck to the spoon. Put it in red wine and drank it. Must have seen it in the movies, because they busted the glasses, threw them at the wall.”

“So?”

“So the man had been in Southtown three days before. Quiet boy. Got stinking smashed pig drunk. Cried and cried and cried. So drunk nobody could hardly understand him. Something about signing a paper so they wouldn’t have to go to jail. Something about some nasty thing somebody was making his wife do on account of they signed the paper. And about not being able to stand it. Nobody knows the right and wrong of it. Nobody knows what happened.”

“But the Pikes can’t get any help out there?”

“They maybe could have. People were thinking on it. Then just before they let Mr. Pike get out of the broker business instead of putting the law on him, he was trying to learn to play golf, and he hit a colored caddy with a golf stick. Laid his head open. Mr. Pike give up trying the game after that. Gave Danny a hundred dollars and paid the hospital. Nobody else seen it. Mr. Pike said Danny walked the wrong way at the wrong time.”

“Into his backswing?”

“That’s what it was, the way they said it. Danny said he had a cold and he sneezed and Mr. Pike missed the ball entire and come at him with his eyes bugged out, making crazy little crying sounds, and Danny turned to run and he knows Mr. Pike couldn’t run that fast, so he figures Mr. Pike threw it at him. Then those that had any idea of working out there, they decided against it.”

“Why were they going to put the law on him when he was in the brokerage house?”

She looked astonished. “Why, for stealing! How else you going to get in trouble in that kind of job? Mr. McGee, I’ve got to get back on the job. See you tomorrow I guess. You don’t see me, it’ll mean I didn’t get anything much tonight out home.”

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