Cinnamon Skin by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

would have to do. So somebody else will have a print and you can get another made."
    "Somebody in Houston," he said. "Very probably. You know, all the pictures I had of the Keynes were on the Keynes."
    "I'll look in the drawer where I throw pictures. There's probably one there, if you want it."
    "I can't get used to being a guest. I want to have a boat and live on it just where I've been living all these years."
    "We can go shopping, if you want."
    "Not yet. That is, if I'm not getting on your nerves."
    "So far you're only a minor irritation."
    "Somebody around here must have taken pictures of Norma and Evan."
    "Sure. But who? They'd be in tourist shots, mostly by accident. Of course there was a very fuzzy picture taken by the woman from Venice, the one that was reproduced in the paper two days after the… the accident."
    "Maybe if we call it the murder, it will be more accurate."
    I went below and looked for the old newspaper, but it had been tossed out.
    So on Saturday morning, I called a man I knew in the city room of the paper, Abe Palinka, and asked about the photograph. Abe checked and called me back.
    "What it was, it was one of those little tiny negatives from one of those little Kodak cameras that take the cartridge. It was on Kodacolor, and maybe you know you get a pretty dim-looking black-andwhite off of that, worse in repro in the paper, but Clancy thought it was good enough to use because it was like, he said, dramatic: the scene before it went boom. What we did, we got a rush job on development, made a set of prints, picked the one we wanted, made a black-and-white, and sent the rest back to the lady-got a pencil?-Mrs. Simmons Davis of eight four eight Sunrise Road, Venice, three three five nine five. How come you haven't given me any kind of a hot lead in a hell of a while, McGee?°'
    "Nothing has been going on."
    "I bet. Okay, if that's what you want me to believe."
    "Thanks, Abe."
    I dialed information for that area and got the Davis number. After the fourth ring a low, warm, husky, slightly-out-of-breath voice said, "Hello?"
    "Mrs. Davis?"
    "This is Brandy Davis."
    "I'm calling from Fort Lauderdale. My name is McGee. Travis McGee."
    "Mr. McGee, when I hear the name of your city, why, my stomach just sort of rolls right over. It's been five days now, but the whole thing is just as vivid in my mind as if it happened five minutes ago. Excuse me, I'm a little out of breath. I was just locking the door when I heard the phone, and I ran back."
    "I don't want to hold you up."
    "I was just going to the drugstore is all."
    "What I'm calling about, a dear friend of mine owned that little cruiser."
    "I heard he was out of town when it happened."
    "That's right. And the pictures he had of his boat and of his niece all were blown up with the boat. We saw the one you took they used in the paper…"
    "That was a terrible job they did! My goodness. They paid me twenty-five dollars for the right to use it. I wish they hadn't said who took it, even. I take much better pictures than that!"
    "I would think so."
    "What I did, you see, I took two. It was an uggo little old boat and so I wouldn't have taken any at all except that Sim and I, we collect weird boat names, and you need a picture to prove it. I guess our, or at least my, favorite this cruise was a Miami motor sailer we saw in Nassau called Estoy Perdido. Meaning, I Am Lost. Well, I took two because it looked to me, looking through the little finder, that a wave slopped up and maybe hid part of the name on the transom just as I clicked it. But it turned out they both came out with good shots of that fancy gold lettering. You mean that poor man would like a picture of his boat and his niece?"
    "He would indeed."
    "I got them back in the mail day before yesterday, and I took them right down to the camera shop and ordered an eight-by-ten of the best one, the one that was nearest when I took it. That usually takes forever, but I do have the small prints the newspaper made