Paper Doll by Robert B. Parker Read Free Book Online

stone. The cars parked nose in to the curb, the way they do in towns, and never do in cities.
    I parked, nose to curb, in front of the Alton Arms, and walked around a Blue Tick hound sleeping on the hot cement walkway in the sun. His tongue lolled out a little, and his skin twitched as if he were dreaming that he was a wild dog on the East African plains, shrugging off a tse-tse fly.
    The lobby was air-conditioned, and opened into the dining room, up one step and separated by an oak railing. At one end of the room was a fireplace sufficient to roast a moose, to the left of the entrance was a reception desk, and behind it was a pleasant, efficient-looking woman with silvery hair and a young face.
    Her looks were deceptive. She was as efficient as a Russian farm collective, although probably more pleasant. It was twenty minutes to register, and ten more to find a room key. By the time she found it I had folded my arms on the counter and put my head down on them.
    She was not amused.
    “Please, sir,” she said. “I’m doing my best.”
    “Isn’t that discouraging,” I said.
    When I finally got to my room, I unpacked.
    I put my razor and toothbrush on the bathroom counter, put my clean shirt on the bureau, and put the Browning 9mm on my belt, back of my hipbone, where the drape of my jacket would hide it in the hollow of my back. Nice thing about an automatic. Being flat, it didn’t compromise any fashion statement that you might be making.
    I had considered risking Alton, South Carolina, without a gun. But one of Spenser’s best crime-buster tips is, never go unarmed on a murder case. So I’d packed it under my shirt, and clean socks, and checked the bag through. I’d probably need it checking out.
    I got walking directions to the Carolina Academy from a polite black guy wearing a green porter’s uniform, and lounging around the front porch of the hotel. The Blue Tick hound was still there, motionless in the sun, but he had turned over on the other side, so I knew he was alive.
    Carolina Academy was a cluster of three white frame houses set in a lot of lawn and flower beds, on the other side of Main Street, behind the commercial block that comprised the Alton downtown.
    The headmistress was a tall, angular, whitehaired woman with a strong nose and small mouth. She wore a long white gauzy dress with a bright blue sash. Her shoes were bright blue also.
    “I’m Dr. Pauline MacCallum,” she said. She was trying, I think, for crisp and efficient, but her South Carolina drawl masked the effect. She gave me a crisp, efficient handshake and gestured toward the straight-back chair with arms in front of her desk.
    “My name is Spenser,” I said and gave her one of my cards. “I’m trying to develop a little background on a former student, Olivia Nelson, who would have been a student here during the late fifties-early sixties-I should think.”
    The small nameplate on the desk said Pauline MacCallum, Ed.D. The office was oval shaped, with a big bay window that looked out on the tennis courts beyond a bed of patient lucies. On the walls were pictures of white-gowned graduating classes.
    “We provide for K through 12,” Dr. MacCallum said. “What year did Miss Nelson start?”
    “Don’t know,” I said. “She was born in 1948, and she graduated from college in 1969.”
    “So,” Dr. MacCallum said, “if she came for the full matriculation, she would have started in 1953, and graduated in 1966.”
    She got up and went to a bookcase to the left of her desk, and scanned the blue leatherbound yearbooks that filled the case. On the tennis courts there was a group of young women in white tennis dresses being instructed. The coach had a good tan and strong legs, and even from here I could see the muscles in her forearms. Each of the young women took a turn returning a gentle serve. Most of them swiped at the ball eagerly, but limply, as if the racket were too heavy. Rarely did the ball get back across the net.
    “I hope