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

“He’s a banker?”

“You may call him a banker if you wish. He found a place for us for Saturday. He couldn’t get away until about noon. So I was going to drive back and wait for him in the parking lot of a small shopping center north of town, then follow him to. the place. He said it was safe and private and nobody would know. He said that not even the person who lived there would ever know we’d been there. So I guess we both knew that if we were ever alone together in a place like that, nothing could help us or save us.”

“But good old Rick decided to make the Vero Beach trip.”

“He was in horrible shape Monday morning, so stiff and sore and lame he could hardly get out of bed. And terribly hung over, of course. When I told him I’d taken Ms friend, McGee, back to the Wahini Lodge, he stared at me and then laughed in the most ghastly way. We’re not speaking, of course. Just the absolute essentials.”

She came and took my empty bottle and dropped the two of them into the tilt-lid kitchen can. “Again I’m doing all the talking, Travis. You have a bad effect on my mouth. Was there something you wanted to see me about, particularly?”

“I guess I’ve had you on my mind, Janice.”

She stared at me, and her frown made two vertical clefts between her dark brows, over the generous nose. She shook her head slowly. “Uh-uh, my friend. If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking. Help the embittered lady get her own back? Eye for an eye, and all that? What’s the next part of the gambit? Healthy young woman deprived of a sex life, et cetera, et cetera? No, my dear. Not even to keep Meg happy by confirming her suspicions.”

“Now that you bring it up, the idea has some merit, I guess. I’ve had you on my mind for a different reason.”

“Such as?”

“Suppose I named your boyfriend by name. The dear, kind, tender, sensitive, wonderful and so on.”

“You can’t, of course. What are you getting at?”

“But if I did, would you feel you had to go to him and tell him that somebody knows?”

“On a hypothetical basis? Let me see. If you did name him, what would be your point, really, in wanting to be certain? What would you be after?”

“A clue to what kind of man he is.”

“He is a marvelous man!”

“Does everybody think so?”

“Of course not! Don’t be so dense! Any man who has strength and drive and opinions of his own will make enemies.”

“Who’ll badmouth him.”

“Of course.”

“Okay, his name is… Tompestuous K. Fliggle, Banker.”

“Travis, you are an idiot.”

“These are idiotic times we live in, my dear.”

And the little inadvertent muscles around her eyes had clued me when I hit the first syllable of the invented name, which was as far as I cared to go.

At a few minutes past noon I read the nameplate on the mailbox at 60 Ridge Lane. Miss Hulda Wennersehn. The name of the real estate firm that managed the garden apartments was on a small sign at the corner. From the first drugstore phone I came to, I called the real estate offices and was switched to a Miss Forrestal. I told her I was with the credit bureau and would appreciate some information on Hulda Wennersehn. She pulled the card and said that Miss Wennersehn, age fifty-one, had been in number sixty for four years and had never been in arrears. I asked if Miss Wennersehn was employed by an insurance company and she said, “Oh, no, unless she changed jobs and didn’t inform us. Of course, she’d have no reason to inform us, actually. But we have her as working for Kinder, Noyes, and Strauss. That’s a brokerage firm. She works as a cashier.” So thank you, my dear. So I phoned the brokerage house and the switchboard girl told me that, my goodness, it had been at least two years since Miss Wennersehn had worked there. She was working for a real estate company. She gave me the phone number. On a hunch I asked her if a Mr. Tom Pike had ever been with the firm, and she said that he had, but that had been some time ago. The number she gave me turned out to be Development Unlimited.

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