The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!
- Автор: Флора Флетчер
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 978-1479436668
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mystery & Crime Stories!». Краткое содержание книги:
“He’s tall. About two inches taller than me. He’s vain and arrogant, and I have a feeling that he could be dangerous. Ladies’ man, as I said. Wavy blond hair and rather florid complexion. He has good shoulders, and he carries himself as if he might have done some amateur boxing, but he’d run to fat if he ever let himself go. Handsome, if you like the type. Too handsome, maybe. Maybe handsome enough to make persuasion fun.”
Moving her smile from the olive to him, she reached past her glass and his and touched his hand with long fingers, and under the table below the intimacy of fingers, he was aware of the simultaneous intimacy of knees. He felt again, as he had felt a thousand times, the dark hunger for her that was often fed but never satisfied, and he knew, as he had known from the first, that there was nothing at all that she wouldn’t do for whatever she wanted, but he knew also that he would never care so long as one of the things she wanted was Peter Roche.
“Don’t worry, Peter,” she said. “Don’t worry for a minute. Persuasion may be fun for Dr. Foresman, but not for me, because the only fun for me is you, and anyhow it can’t be helped. Tell me, darling, how much do you think he’d charge to look at my molars?”
“Offhand,” he said, “I’d guess about ten thousand dollars.”
Chapter 4
Same bar, same booth, but the year in a quarter turn had changed its season. The sun had lost is warmth and was a pale wash in the street outside, cut by a chill wind.
Peter sat over a bourbon and watched the door. A bright scrap of paper danced across the concrete walk and was trapped for an instant against glass.
A man opened the door and went out.
Another man opened the door and came in.
A man and a woman came in together.
The woman was dressed in a navy blue suit and wore a silver fox around her shoulders. She had short mahogany hair under a chip of a blue hat with a tiny red feather on it, and she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and very shortly she would order a very dry martini. The man was tall and blond in expensive tweed, and there was arrogance in the carriage of his head and elastic in his walk. He looked like he would order Scotch.
He did. Peter could see it all from his position. He gave the martini and the Scotch time to diminish by half, and then he went over to the table where the man and the beautiful woman sat.
“Hello, Etta,” he said.
She looked up and smiled and said, “Oh, hello, Peter,” and Dr. Norton Foresman stood up politely and permitted his face to express a nominal amount of interest when Etta introduced them.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “The stepson.”
Peter nodded. “It’s very funny, isn’t it? My being Etta’s stepson, I mean. People always get a laugh out of it.”
“I’d say that it’s more fortunate than funny. For you, that is. Will you sit down and have a drink with us?”
Peter smiled and thought, If you only knew how fortunate it is for me you Goddamn molar mechanic. If you only knew!
He said, “No, thanks. I just had one. See you at home, Etta.”
He went out into the sun that had no warmth and turned down the street two blocks to the slot where he’d left his car. Behind the wheel, he lit a cigarette and looked at his watch. Five-thirty, she’d said. It was five now. He finished the cigarette and lit another from the butt and was acutely conscious of the drag of time.
The wind was stronger in the street. Pedestrians leaned into it, or scurried before it, and made what breaks they could of one another.
Autumn, he thought. Another little tag of time. The tags change, but time stays fixed forever. In the meanwhile, you sit in the static forever and suck cigarettes. In the meanwhile, you sit over endless bourbons and wonder endlessly how persuasion is going, and what forms persuasion takes, and you curse with stale impotence the louse that persuasion profits.
At five-twenty-five he started the car and swung out into traffic. Driving slowly, killing five minutes, making three right turns that brought him back to the street above the bar, he saw then with the inevitable visceral disturbance that she was already waiting for him at the curb, her skirt whipped by the wind around her long legs. He stopped in the traffic lane in defiance of angry horns while she came off the curb and got in beside him. Sliding over against him, she let her head fall back against the upholstery and laughed softly.
“Darling,” she said, “what a relief! You’ve no idea what a bore our dentist is.”
“You didn’t look so bored to me.”
She rolled her head and looked up at his face. “Darling, are you going to be difficult again?”
“I’m sick of Dr. Norton Foresman, that’s all.”
“So am I. Believe me, I was never so sick of anyone in my life before. It’s only because he’s essential. You know that. We’ve got to have him.”
“It’s taking a long time. I never thought it would take so long.”
“We have to be sure. It would be fatal to make a mistake.”
“How much longer?”
“Not long. Not much longer now.”
“Sure. Not much longer. Well, I don’t mind waiting. It’ll be easy. I’ll just drink bourbon and think about the pair of you.”
“You said you wouldn’t brood, darling. You promised you wouldn’t talk about it.”
“Tell me the truth, Etta. Aren’t you rather enjoying yourself?”
“Stop it, Peter.”
“A big, handsome guy like him ought to be very amusing.”
“Damn it, Peter, cut it out! You go on brooding like this, you’ll end up wrecking everything. You’re going pretty sour, you know. Next thing, you’ll be getting violent.”
“Pardon me for going sour. I know it’s unreasonable of me.”
“All right, Peter, all right. Just quit thinking about it. Just think about how it will be when it’s all over. Think about you and me and all the places we’ll go and all the things we’ll do and all the time we’ll have to spend together.”
“And all the money.”
“Yes. And all the money. It wouldn’t be fun without money, Peter. Not for me and not for you. We don’t have to kid ourselves about that.”
His right hand dropped from the wheel to her knee, and he felt her instant response, heard the soft whisper of breath sucked suddenly into her throat. It was always like that. It never failed. His ability to make her respond at once and with intensity was the last remnant of whatever dominance he may once have felt. It sustained him in his sour waiting, in the concession that no man can make and not be sick.
Passing into the suburban area of the city, they began the gradual ascent to the bluff above the river. Crossing the crest of the rise, they dropped down the brief descent to the lip of the bluff and the frail fence along it. The good place for an accident.
Abruptly, he stopped the car beside the fence and looked out and down to the shrunken gray stream in the valley, lean from the long dry months.
“I think I’ll get away for a while,” he said.
Her eyes were briefly startled. “Away? Where?”
“Up to the lodge, I think. Maybe I’ll do some hunting.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Until you’re ready. Until Dr. Norton Foresman has been persuaded.”
“I see.” She picked a cigarette from her purse and lit it with the dash lighter. The smoke piled up on the windshield and spread out in a small, billowing cloud. “I think that might be a good idea. You’re in a dangerous mood, darling. You need to get some of the tension out of you.”
“When you want me, write General Delivery at King’s Center. It’s a little junction development about six miles from the lodge. I’ll drive down every day or so to check.” Twisting suddenly in the seat, he seized her by the hair and jerked her head back. “Say it won’t be long, Etta. Say it again.”