The Good Old Stuff Read Online Free PDF Page B

cigarettes. She shifted her weight forward and the chair tilted down.
    “Now talk, dear,” she said.
    “Last Friday night at about eight thirty you were alone in the bar and a bald-headed man with a deep tan sat at the bar. He was interested in you.”
    “Mmm. The missing Mr. Davisson, eh? Let me see now. You can’t be a local policeman. They all either look like full-backs from the University of Florida or skippers of unsuccessful charter boats. Your complexion and clothes are definitely northern. That might make you FBI, but I don’t think so somehow. Insurance, Mr. Darrigan?”
    He sat on a canvas chair and looked at her with new respect. “Insurance, Mrs. Marrick.”
    “He’s dead, I think.”
    “His wife thinks so too. Why do you?”
    “I was alone. I’m a vain creature, and the older I get the more flattered I am by all little attentions. Your Mr. Davisson was a bit pathetic, my dear. He had a lost look. A … hollowness. Do you understand?”
    “Not quite.”
    “A man of that age will either be totally uninterested in casual females or he will have an enormous amount of assurance about him. Mr. Davisson had neither. He looked at me like a little boy staring into the candy shop. I was almost tempted to help the poor dear, but he looked dreadfully dull. I said to myself, Kathy, there is a man who suddenly has decided to be a bit of a rake and does not know just how to go about it.”
    “Does that make him dead?”
    “No, of course. It was something else. Looking into his eyes was like looking into the eyes of a photograph of someone who has recently died. It is a look of death. It cannot be described. It made me feel quite upset.”
    “How would I write that up in a report?”
    “You wouldn’t, my dear. You would go out and find out how he died. He was looking for adventure last Friday night. And I believe he found it.”
    “With a girl with dark hair?”
    “Perhaps.”
    “It isn’t much of a starting place, is it?” Darrigan said ruefully.
    She finished her drink and tilted her chair back. “I understand that the wife is young.”
    “Comparatively speaking. Are you French?”
    “I was once. You’re quick, aren’t you? I’m told there’s no accent.”
    “No accent. A turn of phrase here and there. What if the wife is young?”
    “Call it my French turn of mind. A lover of the wife could help your Mr. Davisson find … his adventure.”
    “The wife was with a group all evening.”
    “A very sensible precaution.”
    He stood up. “Thank you for talking to me.”
    “You see, you’re not as quick as I thought, Mr. Darrigan. I wanted you to keep questioning me in a clever way, and then I should tell you that Mr. Davisson kept watching the door during his two drinks, as though he were expecting that someone had followed him. He was watching, not with worry, but with … annoyance.”
    Darrigan smiled. “I thought you had something else to tell. And it seemed the quickest way to get it out of you, to pretend to go.”
    She stared at him and then laughed. It was a good laugh, full-throated, rich. “We could be friends, my dear,” she said, when she got her breath.
    “So far I haven’t filled in enough of his day. I know what he did up until very early afternoon. Then there is a gap. He comes into the Aqua Azul bar at eight thirty. He has had a fewdrinks. I like the theory of someone following him, meeting him outside. That would account for his leaving his car at the lot.”
    “What will you do now?”
    “See if I can fill in the blanks in his day.”
    “The blank before he arrived here, and the more important one afterward?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m well known up and down the Gulf beaches, Mr. Darrigan. Being with me would be protective coloration.”
    “And besides, you’re bored.”
    “Utterly.”
    He smiled at her. “Then you’d better get dressed, don’t you think?”
    He waited outside while she changed. He knew that she would be useful for her knowledge of the area.