Hard Case Crime: Baby Moll by John Farris Read Free Book Online Page B

about Evelyn. About how she is.”
    “I think I know what you mean,” I said.
    He nodded, his large eyes on me. He blinked once, slowly.
    “I’m engaged to be married, myself,” I said.
    He nodded again, and smiled disarmingly. “Is that so?” The news seemed to please him. “Is that right?” he said again, as if he were afraid I was only funning.
    “I sure hope Mrs. Rinke feels better,” I said.
    “I’m sure she will.” He got up then, having tugged at my heartstrings enough, and excused himself.
    “You going into town, Pete?” Macy said through a mouthful.
    “Yes.”
    Diane looked up and glanced at me fleetingly. “Could Aimee and I go in with Mallory?” she said to Macy.
    “I’m going in later. I can take you,” a new voice grumbled. It came from Taggart, Macy’s hired hand, a formidable giant as solidly and thickly built as bridge piling. He was good-looking but his features had no mobility and his expression was gluey, turtle-slow.
    “I wanted to go in earlier so I could take Aimee shopping after we leave the doctor,” Diane explained. She touched the back of Taggart’s brown hand. “You can pick us up at the department store this afternoon.”
    His face inclined toward his plate by half an inch. Hedidn’t look at the blonde girl. Her fingers touched his hand for a moment longer, then withdrew. Despite the lack of words, there seemed to be some bond of intimacy between them. He picked up a piece of bread and wiped up the egg yolk on his plate with it, crammed the bread into his mouth.
    Most of them were through eating before I started. I had the dining room to myself when Owen Barr came in. I had forgotten that he was in the house. He wore a shiny purple bathrobe and flopping slippers. He was a little chunky man with red hair that stuck out here and there in tufts around his ears. The top of his head was bald. He had a bristly mustache and mean eyes. He looked worse than I felt.
    He tottered to the table, grabbed the coffeepot and poured a slug into somebody else’s cup. He drank it, sobbing a little between gulps. He looked at me while he was drinking, but not as if he saw me.
    “God damn it,” he said passionately. “Oh, God damn it.” He walked around in a big circle, his slippers flopping, his short arms stuck out to balance him. Then he had another cup of coffee, after which he half sat in a chair and half leaned on his elbows against the table and held the cup tightly with stubby fingers and worked up a belch, a look of great concentration on his blotched face. Big drops of sweat appeared on his forehead.
    I drank the last of my orange juice, left the room and went in search of Macy. I found him in a study in an air-conditioned wing of the house, his feet on the desk, reading the morning paper. There was a loaded .45 on the desk within easy reach. When he heard my step in thedoorway he put the paper across the desk, covering the automatic and the hand that grasped it.
    Then he looked at me, picked up the paper again, flicking ashes off a cigarette in his mouth with a corner of it.
    “Ready to go?” he muttered.
    “Yeah. I’ll need a car. Rudy can return that rented job when he’s up and around. Expense money, too.”
    “We got a lot of cars in the garage. Pick out one you like. Keys are in the ignition.” He went to his wallet and counted out money for me.
    “From now on you don’t talk about what I’m doing,” I said. “You don’t tell anybody where I go or who I see. Is the phone bugged?”
    He folded the paper and put it in his lap. “As far as I know, it isn’t. Telephone company watches it to see the line stays clean. I trust everybody here, Pete.”
    I reached over and picked up the .45. “And you’re using this for a paperweight.” He didn’t say anything. I took it by the barrel and threw it at him. He sat there holding it foolishly.
    “I don’t trust anybody,” I said. “Nice little family you got here, Macy. The blonde in particular. Where did you get