Cobalt by Nathan Aldyne Read Free Book Online

don’t think he entirely understood the way you live your life.”
    â€œSo that was the end of my evening. Tell me what happened to you.” He refilled her coffee cup.
    She took a long swallow of coffee. “I found a man on the beach last night,” she said.
    â€œGood. After a party like that you shouldn’t have to go home alone.”
    â€œYou told your story, let me tell mine. I found a dead man on the beach.”
    Valentine said nothing.
    Clarisse spoke between bites of coffee cake. “I was walking along the beach, and came upon this seaweed, and there was a starfish there—except of course it wasn’t a starfish, it was the corpse’s hand.”
    â€œSo what did you do? Did you heave him— him ?” Clarisse nodded. “—heave him over your shoulder and carry him to the local morgue?”
    She looked at him darkly. “I went to get the police. But first I stopped in the ladies’ room on the wharf and took off my makeup. Police never take you seriously if you’ve got on lots of makeup.”
    â€œWhat time was all this?”
    â€œJust after I left you. It probably wasn’t even five o’clock.”
    â€œIt’s nine now. What have you been doing for the past four hours?”
    â€œWell, I had to show the police where the body was. And then as long as I was there, I figured I might as well watch. Besides, one of the cops was cute—the same one on the door at the Crown last night. And then they pulled the seaweed off—and lo and behold!”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI knew him.”
    â€œWhat? You mean it was somebody we know?”
    â€œSomeone I knew. Jeff, surname King. The one I met getting off the ferry. The one who was looking for a place to stay.”
    â€œOh yes. Dressed as Cain last night. In a toga.”
    â€œA chiton , actually. A toga reaches all the way to the ground.”
    â€œA chiton then. What did the police say when it turned out that you knew him?”
    â€œThey thought I did it of course,” smiled Clarisse proudly. “They said, ‘Was this your boyfriend, lady?’ For ten minutes I was a prime suspect for Murder One.”
    â€œWait—he was murdered? I thought he just drowned and got washed up on the sand.”
    Clarisse shook her head. “He was strangled. The police could tell that on the beach. Then they took him back to the station, and made me wait, and then they brought me in to look at him for formal identification. There were bruises on the back of his head—but I couldn’t see those very well. He might have been hit over the head with a piece of driftwood or something, or maybe he was thrown in the water and hit his head on a piling. Anyway, there were also purple thumb-marks on his throat.”
    â€œThink they’ll dust him for fingerprints?”
    â€œThey were right against his Adam’s Apple. Sort of aubergine.”
    â€œWhat’d you do, compare ’em against a color wheel? How long did you hang around in there?”
    â€œNot long. But I looked close. After all, how often do I get a close-up of a murder victim? Besides, I was still drunk through most of this, and I had to look at him through one eye because I had lost my contact. The police asked me all sorts of questions, but all I knew was what he told me on the pier: that he was in town for the party, and he didn’t have a place to stay. I wonder if I’ll get in the headlines? P’town Corpse Identified by Fashionable Woman Attired as Famous Film Star . Oh God, how can I face reporters with a hangover like this?”
    â€œWhat about footprints on the beach?”
    â€œYes, well no doubt the police are going to make plaster casts of the forty-nine thousand prints down there, and they can be almost certain that the killer’s is one of them. And then they’ll go door to door like Cinderella’s prince, making everyone stick their foot in