Death Trap by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

the dormitory was all he could stand. He was never young the way the other students were young. The noise kept him from working as hard as he wanted to work. And also it was expensive, maintaining two places. And I guess—after you left—I didn’t want to be alone.”
    “Please don’t think you have to explain.”
    “But don’t let them bother you. Try not to hear them.”
    “Okay. What about Tennant?”
    “He wants us to come out to his house. I was there several times before.”
     
    The Tennant home was in a new exclusive housing project south of Warrentown. All roads curved. There was a new shopping section, transplanted trees of respectable size, a community playground. He was at number eight, Anchor Lane. It was compromise-modern, redwood with shed roof and a big overhang. I parked in the drive beside a little khaki Volkswagen.
    “He said to come out into the backyard,” Vicky told me.
    We walked around the house. John Tennant was standing in an empty rectangular swimming pool. He and two small children were dressed in swimming trunks and they were painting the inside of the pool, putting fresh aqua paint over the faded paint of last year. He smiled up at us from the deep end and put the brush on the can and climbed up the ladder. He was a Lincolnesque man, brown and shambling and with deepset eyes. He had a thick thatch of undisciplined iron-gray hair. He had aqua spots on his chest but he was not as liberally daubed as the two kids.
    The two kids, a boy of about ten and a girl a little older, said, “Hi,” to Vicky, and, after Vicky had introduced me to John, he turned and said, “You kids keep going there. Keep up a good pace and maybe you get a bonus on the movie money.”
    He picked up a dirty robe from the apron of the pool and shouldered into it. “Hot enough down in there, but a little chilly out in the wind. Kind of barren labor too. The damn thing will crack again this winter and the patch job will spoil the paint job.”
    I looked at the pool. I could see where old cracks had been cemented. They were all within two feet of the top of the pool.
    “Design it yourself?”
    “And built it myself,” he said. “With some neighborhood help. Maybe this time it won’t crack. That paint is supposed to be more waterproof.”
    “It isn’t water that’s doing it.” I told him.
    “Then what is, Mr. MacReedy?”
    “Your cracks are all above the frost line. Ground freezes in winter and you set some expansion there and it pushes against the pool.”
    “You seem to know what you’re talking about. Is there any solution? Revision, please. Any cheap solution?”
    The pool apron was narrow, only some eighteen inches wide. “There’s one that will just take some labor. Trench all the way around it, outside the apron. Go down three feet, straight. I bet the apron has buckled during the winter too.”
    “Every winter.”
    “Trench it and use shallow forms and pour concrete, so you’ll have a wider apron and empty space under the extension. Better put some reinforcing bars in the concrete. Leave the forms in. Treat the wood first. Cuprinol is good. Then you won’t have enough mass pushing against your walls to crack them, and you’ll have a wider apron. It’s a makeshift, but it ought to work.”
    “Hugh is in the construction business,” Vicky said.
    “Home builder?” he asked.
    “Highways, bridges, airfields. I met Vicky when I was working on the new piece on the Dalton-Warrentown road three years ago. I’ve been in Spain for the last two and a half years, Mr. Tennant. I didn’t know anything about—Vicky’s trouble.”
    We walked over to a redwood table and outdoor chairs in a corner of the yard. Tennant took cigarettes out of the pocket of his robe, and we all sat down. “I’ve tried everything I can think of,” he said softly.
    “I know that, John,” Vicky said. “Tell Hugh what you think.”
    I hadn’t been able to think of Tennant as a capable defense attorney until he turned