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

My dear Mr. McGee:

Pursuant to the wishes of Mrs. Helena Trescott…

[The Trescott put me off the track for a moment, and then I remembered the wedding I had missed, when she had married a Theodore Trescott.]

I am herewith enclosing a cashier’s check in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000.00) along with a letter which Mrs. Trescott asked me to mail with the cashier’s check.

She has explained to me that this sum is in payment of an obligation of several years’ standing, and because it does not seem probable that she will survive her present critical illness, she wished to save you the trouble of presenting a claim against her estate.

If you have any questions about this matter, you can reach me at the address and telephone number given above.

Yours very truly, The law firm was in Fort Courtney, Florida. Her letter was thick, sealed in a separate envelope, and addressed to me. I walked back to the Flush and put it, unopened, on the desk in the lounge. I took one of the big glasses and laid an impressive belt of Plymouth atop the cubes, and then roamed about, sipping at it, continually catching a glimpse of the letter out of the corner of my eye. The eerie coincidence of not having thought of her for maybe almost a year, then having such vivid memories just one week after the letter had been mailed, gave me a hollow feeling in the middle.

But it had to be read and the gin wasn’t going to make it any easier.

Travis, my darling,

I won’t bore you with clinical details-but oh I am so sick of being sick it is almost a relief to be able to see in their eyes that they do not expect me to make it… sick unto death of being sick-a bad joke I guess. Remember the day at Darby Island when we had a contest to see who could invent, the worst joke? And finally declared it a draw? I’m not very brave. I’m scared witless. Dying is so damned absolute-and today I hurt like hell because I made them cut way down on the junk they are giving me so I could have a clear head to write to you… Forgive lousy handwriting, dear. Scared, yes, and also quite vain, so vain I would not look forward to walking out of this place-tottering out, a gray little old lady, all bones and parchment.

Up until a year ago, dear, I looked very much as I looked that marvelous summer we had together, and might look almost as well this year too, except for a little problem known familiarly as Big C. A year ago they thought they took it all out, but then they used cobalt, and then they went in again, and everything was supposed to be fine, but it popped up in two more places, and Thursday they are going to do another radical, which they are now building me up for, and I think Dr. Bill Dyckes is actually, though maybe he wouldn’t even admit it to himself, letting me leave this way instead of the long lousy way that I can expect if they don’t operate.

I said I wasn’t going to bore you! I’m tempted to tear this up and start again, but I think that one letter is about all I can manage. About the check Mr. Hardahee arranged for, and which you will get with this letter, please don’t get stuffy about it. Actually, practically by accident, I became medium rich-an old friend of Mick’s took over the investment thing shortly after Mick died. He is very clever and in the business of managing money for people. For the last five and a half years he has been buying funny little stocks for my account, things I never heard of before, and some of them are never heard of again, but a lot of them go up and up and up, and he smiles and smiles and smiles. But lately, of course, he has been changing everything around so that it will all be neat for the estate taxes. Don’t have strange ideas about you getting money that should go to my girls, because they will be getting enough. Anyway, the money is sort of a fee…