The Faberge Egg Read Online Free PDF

McGuffin called it. It was ironic, McGuffin often thought, that a man who didn’t like boats should have spent so much of his life living first on a Sausalito houseboat and now on a San Francisco ferry boat. But the Oakland Queen, McGuffin thought, remembering Elmo’s parting words, may be my last boat.
    He put the car into a shallow dive, spilled out onto Bridgeway, and raced along the edge of the bay until he spied a phone near the Trident Restaurant. He skidded to a stop and jumped quickly out of the car. He dropped a coin into the box, dialed Information for the number of Marin General Emergency Room, then quickly dialed the number he was given.
    “Emergency,” a woman’s harried voice announced over the background din.
    “This is Dr. Anderson,” McGuffin said. “You dispatched an ambulance for my patient Klaus Vandenhof?”
    “Yeah, a few minutes ago. We’re a little backed up here, Doctor,” she said quickly.
    “I just want to be sure you have the correct address. Could you repeat it for me, please?”
    “Just a minute,” she said in an annoyed tone. Then, a moment later, “Here it is - 1300 Marin Hill Drive?”
    “That’s it, thanks,” McGuffin said, dropping the receiver on the hook and lunging for the car.
    He drove through the center of Sausalito, past the No-Name Bar where he had first met his wife, then back out onto 101 and toward San Rafael. Even though it had been more than a dozen years (he had forgotten the exact date of their marriage), he remembered that first meeting as if it had happened only the night before. And he always would. For despite the grief she had caused him over the years, Marilyn was an unforgettable woman.
    She had been standing at the bar dressed all in black, with fiery blond hair down to her waist, surrounded by a group of admiring men. McGuffin had just returned from a weekend of skiing with his then girlfriend, a Sausalito schoolteacher, with whom he thought he might be in love. Until he saw Marilyn. And she saw him. She watched, with eyes that reminded him now of the moon behind the fog, glistening and elusive, as he steered the schoolteacher through the crowd to a table. He sat the teacher with her back to the blonde, then took the opposite chair. She stared at him with a bemused smile, and McGuffin stared back, remembering, with ever-diminishing frequency, to shift his attention to the teacher from time to time.
    McGuffin wasn’t pretty, and he knew it - his detective face had already been mauled a bit - but women were attracted to him, and he knew that, too. Nevertheless, he usually found it difficult to approach strange women - unless, of course, he had had a few drinks. Then he moved through the singles saloons with the aplomb of a bad nightclub comic and bombed just as often. But some women, and this blonde was certainly one of them, released something in McGuffin, a chemical perhaps, that made him feel invincible, even without the aid of alcohol. Even if it meant wading through all the guys at the bar, McGuffin decided then and there that he would either have her or make a tremendous fool of himself. He didn’t realize at the time that it was possible to do both.
    His chance came a few minutes later when the blonde pushed away from her admirers and walked across the room to the jukebox, sinuous as a black panther. Mumbling an inane excuse, McGuffin got to his feet and followed the blonde to the glowing, pulsing jukebox where she stood studying the selections. She trailed her finger over the glass and didn’t look up when the man in the ski sweater stepped beside her, brushing his hip lightly against hers.
    “I’m going to take her home, and I’ll be back here in half an hour,” McGuffin said. “Where will you be?”
    “Right here,” the blonde answered, without looking up from the musical selections.
    McGuffin returned, and one month later, they were married. Those first couple of years with Marilyn were, McGuffin realized sadly, the best of his