Have Gat—Will Travel by Richard S. Prather Read Free Book Online Page A

on, Shell." She faced me, running white hands over her high breasts, in at her slim waist, and over rounded hips, smoothing her blue-jersey dress. It wasn't wrinkled. I caught up with Donna as she entered the fish hatchery.
    The owner was a mild-looking middle-aged man with hair graying at the temples. When he saw Donna he beamed and grabbed her hands. After introductions, she said, "Mr. Scott wants to see the Amphiprion Percula." There was that word again. Mr. Gordon led us to a twenty-gallon tank, then went into another room.
    "Hell," I said, "they're clownfish."
    "Oh," Donna said, "I wanted to surprise you. You've seen them before!"
    "Uh-huh — but you surprised me. I thought you were talking about whales or something. This is a treat, though. I've never seen so many of them at once. They're beautiful."
    They were. Three pure white bands separating vivid yellow, black-tipped fins, and there were about thirty of them in the tank. A small fortune; they're hard to get. I heard a squeaking sound. Donna had brought in the thermos and uncorked it, was pouring coffee into the two metal cups from its top. She handed me the bigger cup and said, "Got to keep your stamina up."
    "Baby," I said, "you'd better worry about keeping it down."
    She grinned and directed me to points of interest in the room. There were about forty tanks lining the walls and I looked at Neons, Raspboras, Panchax, Badisbadis and more. Once I sipped at the coffee, but it was so hot it burned my lips. I walked back to Donna and noticed her cup was empty.
    "All gone?" I asked, pointing. "Cast-iron esophagus?"
    "I'm used to Mexican food." She grinned. "I like hot stuff."
    "So do I like hot stuff."
    "Then drink your coffee and let's go picnic."
    I didn't know for sure what she meant by that, but I liked it. The cup was at my lips when I looked past Donna to the clownfish tank. Something was screwy. "Hey," I said to her, "something's wrong with the clowns. They're going crazy."
    She laughed. "You mean they're flipping?"
    I groaned as I walked to the tank. "Funny. You should be sent to the firing squad." But then I stopped cracking wise. Two clownfish floated belly-up at the water's surface.
    "They're dying!" I told Donna. "Get Mr. Gordon."
    She trotted off somewhere, but I was watching the tank. Anybody would hate to see such gorgeously colored fish gasping for air and dying, but probably only a fish fancier would feel the way I did. There must have been a dozen dead now.
    Donna stopped beside me. "He'll be here in a minute and fix them up. Drink your coffee, Shell, and let's go."
    That was the first thing she'd said that had hit me wrong. "Well, hell, honey," I said, "I'm going to wait . . ." I let it trail off, wondering why she was so anxious for me to drink the damned coffee. I looked at the full cup, then back at Donna.
    She moistened her lips. "I'll be in the car, Shell."
    I hardly noticed her going. When I looked at the tank again all the fish were dead. The water seemed murky. I raised my hand, rubbed it over my lips where they'd touched the coffee, then sat the cup down slowly, staring at it, a thin vein of revulsion and disbelief running through my brain. I walked out front. Donna wasn't in sight. The car was empty. I whirled around, ran back into the building, into the other room. It was empty, a door open in the far wall. Nobody was in or near the building, and when I sprinted back to my Cad and ground the engine, it didn't start. I found wires loose under the hood.
    Sweating, with my hands moist and cold, I sat behind the wheel, thinking about Donna O'Reilly, who liked everything I like — because she must have planned it that way; Donna, who couldn't have drunk that steaming coffee so fast, who hadn't intended to drink any coffee from that thermos. But the one thought, oddly enough, hardest for me to accept was that anybody — not just a sweet-faced, lovely little Irish colleen, but anybody, could so casually have killed those thirty