Dead on the Island Read Online Free PDF Page A

to hear it from you."
    She held the folder in her left hand,
looking at the picture. In her right was the stub of the cigarette,
which she ground out in the ashtray. "This picture was taken a few
years ago, her senior year in high school. She's nearly twenty
now."
    I did some more figuring. Sharon had been
born when her mother was twenty-six, twelve years after she'd come
to the Island. "Were you still, ah . . . ?"
    "Whoring? The word doesn't bother me. I just
don't want people to know for Sharon's sake. Yes, I was. I'd been
on the circuit for a bit by that time, but when Sharon began making
her presence obvious I came back here. I moved into an apartment,
told people that my husband had died in an automobile accident. I
got a Social Security card. I looked pretty good, and I had a good
telephone voice. I've been a receptionist ever since."
    I looked at her a little dubiously. "Most
women with a background like you've described wouldn't find it
quite so easy to fit into the straight life."
    She lit another cigarette, exhaled. "Nobody
ever said it was easy. I did it, that's all."
    "You were never tempted to make a little
extra money on the side?"
    "Tempted? Sure. But I never gave in. I had a
job and a daughter. I wanted to keep both of them."
    "How about romantic involvements?"
    She handed me the folder after a last brief
look. "None. Oh, there were advances made to me from time to time,
but that's one thing about me that didn't change; I still see men
as good for only one thing."
    "Let's talk about Sharon, then. What's the
story?"
    For the first time she looked as if her calm
facade might crack, but it was only temporary. Then she was in
control again. I wondered if control was something she'd learned
while doing her job on Postoffice Street.
    "She went out on Friday night. She didn't
come home. The next morning I called Dino."
    "I've got to admit that's succinct," I said.
"So. Where'd she go?"
    "I don't know." She blew another of the
smokey jets.
    "Did she walk? Ride? Go alone, or with
someone?"
    "I'm not sure."
    "Look," I said, feeling exasperated already,
"you must know something ."
    She ground out the cigarette, looking at the
ashtray instead of me. "No," she finally said. "I don't have
to know something. My daughter lived here with me, but that doesn't
mean we communicated."
    Something clicked. "She knew," I said. I
thought about it a minute. "She didn't know, and then she knew.
Recently."
    Evelyn Matthews looked at the folder I was
holding, but she still didn't look at me. "Yes," she said.
    I thought that now we were getting somewhere
and that this might turn out to be easier than I'd thought. "Isn't
it possible that she just went away for a while to figure out how
she felt about things? She'll probably call soon, or come home. You
can see that she's had a shock."
    She nodded reluctantly. "It's possible, but
I don't believe it."
    "Did she have any money? A car?"
    "She might have a little money of her own.
She's been working part-time in a little shop on The Strand."
    "What does she do the rest of the time?"
    "She goes to the community college. She
wants to be a lawyer."
    "Boyfriends?"
    "No one steady." She reached for the
Marlboro pack, picked it up, and then set it back down. "I smoke
too much," she said. "There's a boy she likes, Terry Shelton. You
could talk to him. He works at the shop, too."
    "What about the car?"
    "I have a car. Sharon doesn't. Mine's in the
garage."
    It was time to backtrack a little. "How'd
you get to know Dino?"
    She smiled a reminiscent smile. "He used to
hang around the house. He was just a kid, eight, ten maybe. He and
Ray came around sometimes. We all knew he was related to the
bosses, so we were nice to him. He never came in at night, just in
the afternoon sometimes."
    Something must have showed in my face.
    "Not nice to him the way you're thinking,"
she said. "Jesus. He was just a kid."
    "Sorry," I said.
    She waved it away. "No more than what most
people would think. We were whores, after