The Barbarous Coast Read Online Free PDF Page B

years, I guess I made him happy. He didn’t bother
me
with his Copenhagen snuff and his dirt around the house. It takes more than that to bother
me
. So when he died I married again, and that one wasn’t so bad. Could have been better, could have been worse. It was kind of a relief, though, when
he
died. He didn’t do a lick of work in seven years. Luckily I had the strength to support him.”
    Her sharp eyes, ringed with concentric wrinkles, flicked from me to George Wall and back again. “You’re both nice-appearing young men, you ought to be able to find a girl willing to take a chance with you.” She smiled fiercely, swirled her remaining coffee around in the cup, and drank it down.
    “I had a wife,” George Wall said heavily. “I’m looking for her now.”
    “You don’t say. Why didn’t you say so?”
    “I’ve been trying to.”
    “Don’t get mad. I like a little sociability, don’t you? What’s her name?”
    “Hester.”
    Her eyes flattened. “Hester Campbell?”
    “Hester Campbell Wall.”
    “Well, I’ll be darned, I didn’t know she was married. What happened, did she run away?”
    He nodded solemnly. “Last June.”
    “What do you know? She’s got less sense than I thought she had, running away from a nice young fellow like you.”She inspected his face intently through the screen, clucking in decrescendo. “ ’Course I never did give her credit for too much sense. She was always full of razzmatazz, ever since she was a kid.”
    “Have you known her long?” I said.
    “You bet I have. Her and her sister and her mother both. She was a hoity-toity one, her mother, always putting on airs.”
    “Do you know where her mother is now?”
    “Haven’t seen her for years, or the sister either.”
    I looked at George Wall.
    He shook his head. “I didn’t even know she had a mother. She never talked about her family. I thought she was an orphan.”
    “She had one,” the old woman said. “Her and her sister, Rina, they were both well supplied with a mother. Mrs. Campbell was bound to make something out of those girls if it killed them. I don’t know how she afforded all those lessons she gave them—music lessons and dancing lessons and swimming lessons.”
    “No husband?”
    “Not when I knew her. She was clerking in the liquor store during the war, which is how we became acquainted, through my second. Mrs. Campbell was always bragging about her girls, but she didn’t really have their welfare at heart. She was what they call a movie-mother, I guess, trying to get her little girls to support her.”
    “Does she still live here?”
    “Not to my knowledge. She dropped out of sight years ago. Which didn’t break my heart.”
    “And you don’t know where Hester is, either?”
    “I haven’t laid eyes on the girl since September. She moved out, and that was that. We have some turnover in Malibu, I can tell you.”
    “Where did she move to?” George said.
    “That’s what I’d like to know.” Her gaze shifted to me: “Are you a relative, too?”
    “No, I’m a private detective.”
    She showed no surprise. “All right, I’ll talk to you, then. Come inside and have a cup of coffee. Your friend can wait outside.”
    Wall didn’t argue; he merely looked disgruntled. Mrs. Lamb unhooked her screen door, and I followed her into the tiny white kitchen. The red plaid of the tablecloth was repeated in the curtains over the sink. Coffee was bubbling on an electric plate.
    Mrs. Lamb poured some of it for me in a cup which didn’t match hers, and then some more for herself. She sat at the table, motioned to me to sit opposite.
    “I couldn’t exist without coffee. I developed the habit when I ran the snack bar. Twenty-five cups a day, silly old woman.” But she sounded very tolerant of herself. “I do believe if I cut myself I’d bleed coffee. Mr. Finney—he’s my adviser at the Spiritualist Church—says I should switch to tea, but I say no. Mr. Finney, I told him, the day I have