Death Claims Read Online Free PDF

but it wasn't a man. It was a dummy. He heard a chuckle. The swimmer grinned at him. In two easy motions he was out of the pool. "Thanks," he said. "But he's as near resuscitated as he's ever going to get. You don't need to bother with him anymore. Just let him down easy." He picked up a towel from a redwood chaise and dried his hair. 
    "What's the idea?" Dave asked. 
    "Next script I film" — there was a terry-cloth robe on the chaise; he flapped into it — "I got to rescue the boy in the story from drowning in a river." He knotted the sash. "It won't be easy as this, but I'm trying to keep the current and all that in mind." His grin made handsome gouges in his face. "That's where the acting comes in." 
    "Like the struggling you did just now to wrestle him out of the pool?" 
    "Like that. They'll have to weight him more in the river. But he'll never be more than fifty-sixty pounds, I expect." The accent was modified Southwest. Nothing else was modified. He stood six feet four and perfect. There were probably more beautiful men alive. Dave hadn't seen them. The actor stuck out a hand. "I'm Wade Cochran. You're Brandstetter. Katy tells me you went to a lot of trouble to track me down. What can I do for you?'' 
    "I'm looking for someone. A boy. His father drowned last week. He was insured by my company. The boy is the beneficiary. His name is Peter Oats." 
    Cochran looked blank. "I don't know him." 
    "He was seen in your car late one night at the theatre, the old mill, up the canyon back of El Molino. Remember? He had the lead in a play called Lorenzaccio . You were in the audience every night." 
    "Ah!" Cochran slapped his forehead. "That kid. Of course. Sure." He looked past Dave, who turned. The red-haired girl still stood at the end of the pool beside a black cluster of video tape equipment. Cochran called to her, "Katy, will you bring us out some of that cranberry juice?" 
    She walked brisk and prim along the far edge of the pool and vanished into a breezeway. A door closed. 
    Cochran said, "I drove him back to the theatre one night. We'd been to a seafood place down in town there. Las Gaviotas. He'd been begging to talk to me." Cochran sat on the chaise. A redwood table was next to it, where an open shooting script lay. Then there was a chair. He tilted his head at it. Dave sat. "People pester you. But he had talent and I like to be fair." The far door closed again and he turned to watch Katy bringing a fat glass jug of red liquid and tumblers with ice cubes on a tray of Mexican hammered tin. She set it on the table. 
    "Will you be going to the lodge tonight?" 
    "I was. Who wants to know?" 
    "Your mother." Katy unscrewed the cap on the jug and filled the glasses. "She'd like the Reverend to stay over. He will if you're going to be here." 
    "All right," Cochran said. "I won't go till after supper and I'll be back to have breakfast with him. You can tell her." 
    Katy twisted the cap back on the jug. "She'd rather you stayed over. She's told the network people. They want to get footage of you here together. Tonight." 
    Cochran's mouth tightened. He wasn't happy, but he said, "Okay. If it's all right with the Reverend.'' 
    Katy smiled. "Oh, she's already arranged it with him. Thank you. She'll be so pleased." She went away. 
    "While we were eating," Cochran said to Dave, "the kid missed his watch. He was afraid to leave it up there, afraid somebody'd take it. 'Rip it off is the way he put it. He didn't have a car. It's too far to walk. I drove him back." 
    "After the play closed, he stayed away from the theatre," Dave said. "Whittington, the man who runs it, has the impression you made him some kind of offer." 
    Cochran shook his head and gulped from his glass. "You couldn't cast him in the stuff we shoot. He's too slight. Speech is too good. I don't expect to find anybody at that place — not for Westerns." He nodded at Dave's glass. "Try that. It's good stuff. Healthy. They say you drink enough cranberry