Murder for the Bride by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

Had a white terry-cloth outfit. A pair of tight trunks and a narrow little halter. The old
Mobile
never had the brightwork polished so much as on that trip. The crew went around glassy-eyed.”
    “Was she friendly?”
    “Hell, no. Couldn’t get a word or a smile out of her until the last day out. You could have knocked me over with a pinfeather when she came up to me and started to be chummy. That’s when I asked her to go to the anniversary party. She asked about hotels and I recommended the Bayton.”
    I knew that I had been stupid in not thinking of Bill French before. What I was doing was trying to reconstruct a dead woman. I had to find out about her. Once I learned all about her, I would know who had killed her, because then I would know why she had been killed. I fought back the liquor mists from my brain.
    “I supposed you noticed her when she came aboard at Buenos Aires, Bill.”
    “Sure did,” he said feelingly. “You know how you wonder about passengers. You could see she had connections, the way she got handled at the dock. A big blond guy took her right through all the red-tape artists as though they weren’t there. Hey!”
    I realized that I had grabbed hold of his arm. “An enormous blond man, Bill?”
    “Yeah. I was at the head of the gangplank, and he asked me where Miss Rentane’s cabin was. With his hair long that way and his high voice, you could figure him for some sort of a pansy. But not when he looked right at you. He had an accent. I’d say Dutch or German. He acted like a big shot.”
    “Bill, how did Laura act on the trip? Did she seem nervous or anything?”
    “Not a bit. One thing, though. We made all the usual stops. Rio, Trinidad, Havana. She never got off the ship. She stayed right in her cabin. No, I wouldn’t say she seemed nervous. More like she was … disinterested.”
    “How about when you docked here?”
    “I don’t know about that. I’m pretty busy usually. We were rushing to get through for the celebration, you know. I told her when I’d pick her up at the Bayton.”
    There was no more information he could give me. Some of the guests had left. Jill asked me if I was ready to go. I thanked Tram and said good-by and we went out to Jill’s car and rode back into town. I took her to dinner and put a steak down on top of the tepid gin.
    “Are you getting anywhere, Dil?” she asked me, her gray eyes intent.
    “Me? Not getting a thing, honey.”
    “Dil, you’re an engineer. What happens when the governor breaks on a machine?”
    I shrugged. “Maybe it revs up to where it shakes itself to pieces.”
    “Don’t shake yourself to pieces, Dil. Let Captain Paris and his people handle it. Leave it to men like Barney Zeck. This is their affair.”
    I looked at her. “And mine. And thanks, Jill, for talking about engineering. You know what we do? We dig a hole and stuff dynamite in it. Then we rig a bunch of geophonesat intervals. We run the leads from the geophones back to the electronic stuff in the shed. Then we blow the dynamite. The geophones pick up the echoes of the explosion bouncing off the substrata. We get a map of what’s underground. And that’s what I need to know about Laura. The substrata. I’ve got to plant some geophones around and then arrange an explosion.”
    She reached out and caught the first two fingers of my right hand in her fist. “Dil, listen to me. Do you
want
to know what she was? Maybe she was something—unclean. Maybe it won’t be good to know.”
    “Don’t talk to me like that,” I said. She took her hand back quickly and I thought I saw the glint of tears standing in her eyes before she turned her head away quickly. Then she smiled and was casual and we said good night by her car and I watched her drive away, moving too fast for the traffic.

Chapter Five
    A n hour after I said good night to Jill, I found myself on Royal Street standing in front of a place called the Rickrack. The Quarter comes alive at night. Walking down