The Doomsters by Ross MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

it.”
    “How heavy a gun?”
    “Sam said not so heavy. But any gun is too big when a man is off his rocker.”
    Mildred let out a small cry.
    “Don’t worry, Mrs. Hallman. We got the place staked out. We’ll pick him up.” Tipping his hat back, he pushed his face in at her window. “You better get rid of your boyfriend before we do pick him up. Carl won’t like it if you got a boyfriend, driving his car and all.”
    She looked from him to me, her mouth a thin line. “This is Sheriff Ostervelt, Mr. Archer. I’m sorry I forgot my manners. Sheriff Ostervelt never had any to remember.”
    Ostervelt smirked. “Take a joke, eh?”
    “Not from you,” she said without looking at him.
    “Still mad, eh? Give it time. Give it time.”
    He laid a thick hand on her shoulder. She took it in both of hers and flung it away from her. I started to get out of the car.
    “Don’t,” she said. “He only wants trouble.”
    “Trouble? Not me,” Ostervelt said. “I try to make a little joke. You don’t think it’s funny. Is that trouble, between friends?”
    I said: “Mrs. Hallman’s expected at the house. I said I’d drive her there. Much as I’d love to go on talking to you all afternoon.”
    “I’ll take her to the house.” Ostervelt gestured toward the black Mercury Special parked on the shoulder, and patted his holster. “The husband’s lurking around in the groves, and I don’t have the men to comb them for him. She might need protection.”
    “Protection is my business.”
    “What the hell does that mean?”
    “I’m a private detective.”
    “What do you know? You got a license, maybe?”
    “Yes. It’s good statewide. Now do we go, or do we stay here and have some more repartee?”
    “Sure,” he said, “I’m stupid—just a stupid fool, and my jokes ain’t funny. Only I got an official responsibility. So you better let me see that license you say you got.”
    Moving very slowly, the sheriff came around to my side of the car again. I slapped my photostat into his hand. He read it aloud, in an elocutionary voice, pausing to check the physical description against my appearance.
    “Six-foot-two, one-ninety,” he repeated. “A hunk of man. Love those beautiful blue eyes. Or are they gray, Mrs. Hallman? You’d know.”
    “Leave me alone.” Her voice was barely audible.
    “Sure. But I better drive you up to the house in person. Hollywood here has those beautiful powder-blue eyes, but it don’t say here”—he flicked my photostat with his forefinger—“what his score is on a moving target.”
    I picked the black-and-white card out of his hand, released the emergency brake, stepped on the gas. It wasn’t politic. But enough was enough.

chapter
9
          T HE private road ran ruler-straight through the geometric maze of the orange trees. Midway between the highway and the house, it widened in front of several barnlike packing-sheds. The fruit on the trees was unripe, and the red-painted sheds were empty and deserted-looking.In a clearing behind them, a row of tumbledown hutches, equally empty, provided shelter of a sort for migrant pickers.
    Nearly a mile further on, the main house stood back from the road, half-shadowed by overarching oaks. Its brown adobe walls looked as indigenous as the oaks. The red Ford station wagon and the sheriff’s patrol car on the curving gravel driveway seemed out of place, or rather out of time. The thing that struck me most as I parked in the driveway was a child’s swing suspended by new rope from a branch of one of the trees. No one had mentioned a child.
    When I switched off the Buick’s engine, the silence was almost absolute. The house and its grounds were tranquil. Shadows lay soft as peace in the deep veranda. It was hard to believe the other side of the postcard.
    The silence was broken by a screen door’s percussion. A blonde woman wearing black satin slacks and a white shirt came out on the front veranda. She folded her arms over her breasts and