The Witchfinder Read Online Free PDF Page B

thought—but that would be impossible, wouldn’t it? Poor Jay. Well, good luck. I’d ask you to give my best to Karen out of simple good manners, but the best is lost on women like her.”
    I grasped his weak old hand and got out of there before I spilled the name of my favorite teddy bear.

Four
    “F URLONG RESIDENCE.”
    Another female on the other end of another telephone. This one had a Middle Eastern accent. There are more of those in the metropolitan area than in all the remakes of Beau Geste put together.
    “Mrs. Furlong, please.” I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke hang on the motionless air. I miss booths. The telephone had its own built-in shade, leaving me outside to face the heat and noxious gases on East Jefferson. A red 1965 Mustang convertible mumbled past, followed by a 1915 Ford depot hack, a 1950 Hudson Hornet, and a Tucker; on their way to a road rally to celebrate the centenary of the automobile. There was always some kind of motoring anniversary coming up, and Detroit never missed one. It was the only thing good that had happened to the city since Cadillac came ashore to dump the water out of his boots.
    “Who is speaking?”
    “My name is Amos Walker. I’m an investigator hired by Mr. Furlong’s attorney to—”
    “Is he dead?”
    This was a new voice, a contralto without age or nationality and precious little gender.
    “Mrs. Furlong?” Araby was confused.
    “I’ve got it, Khalida. You can hang up.” After the click: “This is Karen Furlong. Are you calling to report Jay’s death?”
    “No, he’s still alive,” I said.
    Air blew out through a pair of nostrils. “The son of a bitch was always on his way somewhere else all the time we were married. Why did he have to pick now to hang around? What did you say your name was?”
    I said it again. “Stuart Lund has hired me to interview the beneficiaries of Mr. Furlong’s will. It’s a routine investigation connected with the reading. Are you free anytime today?”
    “I suppose so, if it will speed up the process. Four o’clock.”
    “Will John Bell Furlong also be available at that time?”
    “Yes, yes. My son’s always available. Don’t be late. I have the decorator coming at five.”
    I hung up on the dial tone and walked the block and a half to where I’d left the car. By the time I got there I was squelching inside my clothes. At Rivard a big cop was directing traffic around a stalled Bonneville with steam rolling out from under its hood. The cop had sweated through his light blue uniform shirt and his face had the look of pavement buckled in the heat. I didn’t ask him if he was intending to celebrate the invention of the automobile.
    I had thirty minutes to kill and the office was nearby, so I parked in the abandoned service station across the street from my building, gave the derelict who lived in the empty bay a dollar not to slash my tires, and went up. The stairwell smelled of kippers. There hadn’t been any food in the building since the stove manufacturer who built it converted it from apartments in 1911, but on stagnant days the ghosts of old meals prowled the hallways.
    The only things waiting in my waiting room were the voting-age Field & Streams on the coffee table. I’d left the table fan, a refugee from the Eisenhower administration, oscillating on the window sill in the think pit; a homey odor of burning bearings greeted me when I opened the door. A pigeon feather jigged around in the current when I closed it, paused on top of the telephone, then fluttered off again when the fan swung back that direction. I wondered where it got its energy.
    In the little water closet, installed as an afterthought by an exasperated contractor when the fad for indoor plumbing didn’t pass, I stripped to the waist, splashed my face and chest and under my arms, used the thin towel, and applied a generous layer of talcum. I broke a fresh shirt out of the black iron safe and sat down behind the desk without fastening the