Murder in the Wind by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

did not seem worth the effort.
    After he finished his coffee, he picked up the suitcase and went out through the kitchen to the garage. Babe would have the red Hillman to get around in. She despised driving it, but she certainly couldn’t expect him to drive up to Georgia in it. He put his suitcase in the Cad, then paused, turned and went back into the house and phoned Charlie Himbermark again and told Charlie he was just leaving and to be ready.
    He drove off St. Armands Key, over the Ringling Bridges to the mainland. The gas tank was nearly full. The big dark blue Cadillac was running smoothly. The rain was a damn nuisance, but he decided he ought to be able to make pretty good time in spite of it. Run right up to Waycross and then it was only another thirty miles to the small Georgia city where Himbermark had come so close to fouling up the entire operation.
    He turned south on Orange and, a few minutes later, he pulled up in front of the small frame house on one of the back streets beyond the post office where Charlie Himbermark lived. He blew the horn. Charlie came out onto the porch and turned to say good-by to Agnes. Agnes waved at the car and Johnny waved back. Charlie wore a transparent raincoat. He kissed Agnes and came hurrying down the walk through the rain and got in beside Johnny.
    “Hell of a morning,” Charlie said cheerfully. He struggled awkwardly and got himself out of the raincoat and tossed it into the back seat, then lifted his suitcase over and put it on the floor in back. He plumped himself down and wiggled around and adjusted himself and gave a small sigh of relaxation—all of which irritated Johnny Flagan.
    Johnny wished he’d never seen or heard of Charlie Himbermark, never seen his pale sixty-year-old face, heard his high nervous voice. Charlie was a man always anxious to please everybody. When he stood talking to anyone, his whole attitude was that of intense eagerness to be found pleasing. He would lean forward, his eyes eager, his mouth working as you talked. He would laugh before you came to the point of the joke. He would pat you quickly and lightly on the shoulder whenever he could, his wide blue eyes watering.
    Charlie Himbermark had come down to Sarasota about eight years ago. His wife had died in the north and he’d had some sort of breakdown. He came down with a small pension and a desire to find something to do. He had been in a big bank in the north, some sort of job in the trust department. After a year or so of looking, Charlie found a job in one of the brokerage offices in town. Two years later he married Agnes Steppey, one of Babe’s oldest friends. Agnes had been widowed for over a year, and they met when Agnes went into the brokerage office to ask about some stock her husband had left her.
    A year ago Charlie had lost his job. It hadn’t been his fault, exactly. The firm had decided to consolidate the Sarasota staff with the St. Petersburg office, and Agnes hadn’t felt that she could leave the city where she had been born and grown up, had married, been widowed and married again. So Charlie refused the transfer. There was enough for the two of them to get along in meager comfort, but, as Agnes told Babe, Charlie was restless and depressed because he couldn’t find anything to do—anything that suited him. Babe kept mentioning it to Johnny until at last he thought over his current enterprises and picked out something he thought Charlie could do. It was just a temporary job and it was up in Georgia, but Johnny figured he could pay a hundred a week and expenses, and Charlie was very pleased about it. Pleased and eager to please and like a damn kid about it.
    So Johnny had sent him up to Georgia, and it hadn’t been a particularly delicate situation up there—just a situation where it was wise to have a man on the spot, a man he could trust to do some listening and some soothing and report back frequently until the deal went through, but Charlie had managed to foul it up.