Where Is Janice Gantry? Read Online Free PDF Page A

damn early in the morning and landed on the bay side and pulled my little outboard way up into the mangroves and out of sight. By the time they landed on the beach side at noon, I had an observation post that looked right out on the most likely spot.
    “The sun was blazing hot, and they established themselves right out in front of me, and before I could get mentally adjusted, they’d spread blankets, stripped themselves right down to the buff and they were rubbing the suntan oil on. The first time I saw all there was to see of Sis Gantry, I thought I’d die of love and yearning. She made those other two look like sick, plucked chickens. They kept going into the Gulf to cool off and walking back and stretching out again. I was perfectly hidden, and I wasn’t twenty feet from those blankets. By about the third time Sis took a dip, I could stare without feeling dizzy. When they all sat on one blanket, giggling and quacking and splitting up the big picnic lunch,I had time to realize that between hunger and thirst and hungry bugs, I was the most uncomfortable boy in the whole state of Florida.
    “By late afternoon when she took her tenth or fifteenth dip in the Gulf, it didn’t matter to me whether I looked at her or not. I looked, out of some sense of duty I guess, but a glass of ice water would have looked twice as good and three times as useful. I had no way to sneak out of there. I had to wait it out. And I knew that if they found out about me being there, I’d get half killed.
    “When the edge of the sun touched the horizon, those girls sailed away. I never wanted to see another naked woman. They hadn’t left a scrap of food or a swallow of Coke. I’d spent eleven hours on that island, and the last seven of it on my belly, without food or drink. When I walked back into my house I felt seventy years old and I looked so terrible it scared my mother. I ate so much she stopped worrying.
    “The next time I saw Sis in the flesh, I knew my great love had ended somehow. I not only didn’t have to wonder what was under her clothes, I kept wishing I could forget. I can still close my eyes and see her padding up the beach toward her blanket. I guess it was about two years later she married that bum.”
    Charlie Haywood sighed and yawned. “That’s a lot of woman going to waste. Is she just the same as ever?”
    “If a runaway tiger jumped through the window near her desk, Sis Gantry would scold it for breaking the window, scratch it behind the ear to show she wasn’t really mad, then lead it across the street and buy it a steak.”
    “And she automatically assumes I’m innocent?”
    “That’s what she said.”
    He stood up. “I’ll wash this stuff up and then go get a nap. You going out again?”
    “I’ll be back a little after six.” I looked at my watch.“It’ll be dark enough by seven-thirty to drive you in. Where do you want to be left off?”
    “I’ve decided to give that a little more thought, Sam. I’ll know by the time you take me in.”
    I left him my cigarettes, re-locked the cottage, and drove into town and over the bridge to the office next to Orange Beach. Neither Sis nor Jennie Benjamin was there. I knew the boss man wouldn’t be in. Tom Earle was taking a summer vacation at a Canadian fishing lodge. Vince Avery was there, in persuasive, low-voiced conversation with a well-padded female prospect. Vince is an incurable lightweight who does everything imaginable to enhance his own fancied resemblance to the Clark Gable of twenty years back.
    Alice Jessup came over to my desk as I sat down, and gave me a phone slip to return a Tampa call. She is a sallow, timid girl in her twenties, the only purely clerical and secretarial worker in the office. The associates work on a percentage deal with Tom. Sis has her real estate license and she is half and half. She gets a salary for the secretarial work she does, plus a smaller percentage on those deals she swings.
    “Can you fit in a little dictation,