Where Is Janice Gantry? Read Online Free PDF

Alice?” I asked her.
    She blushed, as she invariably does, and said, “Oh, sure, it’s real dead around here, believe me. I’ll get my book.”
    Sis and Alice keep a separate account of any time spent on my work and bill me at the end of each month. I dictated the three reports, then returned the Tampa call and learned of two new appraisals to make, one in Osprey and one in Punta Gorda, and I would get the pertinent papers in the morning mail. I walked a half-block south on Orange Road to stand in the murky chill of the Best Beach Bar and nurse a cold dark Löwenbräu and argue the pennant race with fat, opinionated Gus Herka, owner, proprietor and bartender.
    When we had exhausted baseball he said, “Hey, how about that Charlie Haywood? How about him, hey? He was a customer, you know it? Not a steady customer. Just sometimes.Nice looking boy, you know it? Sam, you figure like they say he’s come back here, hey, maybe? Why should he do that? Three years to go, more when they catch him. Stupid, you know it?”
    “Pretty stupid, Gus,” I agreed.
    He glared at me. “You know damn well it was stupid, Sam!” That’s a thing Gus has. If you agree with him he comes back at you as though you had contradicted him. Sometimes it is difficult for strangers to understand.
    Though I was, at the moment, the only customer, he leaned across the bar toward me in a heavily conspiratorial manner. “There’s more than meets the eye, you know it?”
    “Like what, Gus?”
    “Like a week before he got arrested, he come in here late, a little bit drunk, not too bad, lipstick all around his mouth, buys a bottle, you know it? Six dollars. Edgy, he acted. Like he would fight anybody. Not like that boy at all, you know it? He went out with the bottle and drove away. Me, I pulled the blind here to look out like this. See? He had a woman in the car with him, you know it? Saw her under the street light, just the hair on her head, silver as a dime, floozy hair.”
    “So what does that prove, Gus?”
    “You are stupid, Sam, you know it? No broad comes into the case. So a nice boy like that, he has a cheap broad making him edgy and drunk, and she needles him and needles him to come up with big money so he tries something foolish. I seen it a dozen times before, you know it?”
    I told him he was a great psychologist, and walked back to the office. The reports were done and on my desk, errorless. Miss Alice Jessup does my work with such speed she cheats herself.
    I thanked her and sealed the envelopes and said, “It’s quarter after five, Alice.”
    “I know but I got to wait for Sis because she’s the one that locks up.”
    “I’ll wait. Where is she?”
    “Thanks. She shouldn’t be long. It was a rental thing. She went to show the people the house just a little bit before you come in.”
    I had ten minutes alone in the office before Sis came to a screeching stop out front and trotted in. The white blouse was a bit wilted, the green skirt slightly rumpled. I thought of a fourteen-year-old Charlie watching the beach girls.
    “What are you grinning at, Brice?” she demanded.
    “A joke I couldn’t possibly tell you.”
    “That kind, eh? Hey, I rented a house.”
    “Good deal.”
    “In August any kind of a deal is good.” She came and sat on the corner of my desk and looked down at me. “How are you doing, Sam?” she asked, her dark blue eyes solemn.
    “I like summers the best, and this is a good one. Fishing, swimming, reading, and not too much work. A little bowling, with beer to top it off.”
    “Have you got a girl these days, Sam?”
    “No girl.”
    “Maybe that isn’t even healthy, dear.”
    “Maybe it isn’t. But it’s sure peaceful.”
    “Was I such a nuisance—way back when I was your girl?”
    “You were just right, Sis, in every way.”
    As she looked at me I saw a little bit of the hurt she had so honorably concealed from me for so long. “If I was right, Sam. And what we had was certainly