MacDonald, John D – Travis McGee 18 – The Green Ripper

“Maybe he was showing him some land. Maybe the Church wants to set up an encampment here,” I said.

“Where there isn’t any available? That piece was sold months ago.”

“To whom?” Meyer asked.

“To some kind of foreign syndicate, headquartered in Brussels. I was told they plan to put up a hotel-club where members can come for holidays in the States. They took twenty undeveloped acres over on our western boundary near the airstrip.”

“For foreign members of the Church of the Apocrypha?”Meyer asked with a sweet smile.

“Oh, no!” Gretel looked horrified. “Mr. Ladwigg and Mr. Broffski and Mr. Slater would have fits. It can’t be that, really. Could it, Travis? Could that creep…”

“Not at the price they’re probably getting out there.”

“Two hundred and twenty-five thousand. It was a special price because of no roads or water supply or sewer.”

“Maybe Brother Titus left the Church,” I suggested. “Maybe he’s into real estate. That has the status of a religion in south Florida”

She didn’t laugh. She was scowling. ‘I keep thinking of Mitsy. Her hands were grubby and her hair was caked with dirt. She had sores on her anHes. She looked exhausted. I am damn well god ing to find out exactly what that man is doing around there. And it can’t be anything good.”

“You two are well-matched,” Meyer said. “You both have the same kind of compulsive curiosity. I will tell you what I tell Travis, my dear. Proceed with caution. The world is full of damp rocks, with some very strange creatures hiding under them.”

“Herm Ladwigg is an old honey bear,” she said. “He would not be involved in anything tricky or

The Green Ripper dirty. And if I can think of the right way to ask him, hell tell me what’s going on.”

The next time we looked at Meyer, we found he had fallen asleep in the chair. He would bitterly resent our leaving him like that, so we stirred him awake. He said he was too tired to eat, and over Gretelts protests that she could stir up something in a hurry, he went clumping on back to his stubby old cabin cruiser moored just down the pier from my slip, the John M~ryru~rd Reynes, sighing in consternation at the state of all the money in the world.

We buttoned up The Busted Flush. Gretel kicked on her shoes and hung herself around my neck and grinned into my face and said, “Well… will it be before or after the crab-meat feast I am going to fix usl”

I gave it judicious thought. “How about a little of both?”

YIow did I know you were going to say that?”

“Because I usually do.”

“Shut up and deal,” she whispered.

So the gusty winds of a Friday night in December came circling through the marina, grinding and tilting all the play boats and work boats around us, creaking the hulls against the fenders, clanking fit- tings against masts. While in the big bed in the master stateroom her narrowed eyes glinted in faint reflected light, my hands found the well-known slopes and lifts and hollows of her warmth and agility. We played the games of delay and anffcipaffon, of teasing and waiting, until we went past the boundaries of willed restraint and came in a mounting rush that seemed to seek an even greater closeness than the paired loins could provide. And then subsided, with the outdoor wind making breathing sounds against the superstructure of the old barge-type houseboat, and the faint swing and dip of the hull seemlug to echo, in a slower pace, the lovemaking just ended. With neither of us knowing or guessing that it was the very last night. With neither of us able to endure that knowledge had we been told.

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Because Gretel had too many jobs at Bonnie Brae, she went back out Saturday morning to catch up on her desk work, driving off in the riffle Honda Civic I had helped her find and buy. It had belonged to a hairdresser at Pier 66 who had decided to marry her friend and go live in Saudi Arabia. It was pink, with a special muffler.

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