The Drowner by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

said.
    “It might be nothing, and it might be something, and we’ll satisfy ourselves one way or the other, Miss Larrimore.”
    “Did you bring the letter?”
    He took it out of his inside jacket pocket. “You can have it back. I have a photocopy.”
    “Did you think that part of it sounded… strange?”
    “Yes.”
    But his tone was so noncommittal she had to open the letter and look at the strange part again to reassure herself. The letter had arrived the same day as the news she was dead.
    The odd part read, “Problems, problems, problems. This is a strange one all tangled up into emotions and ethics and a couple of kinds of secrecy. I’m trying to sort it out and decide what to do. You seem to be my only outlet on some things, kid sister, so bear with me. The details later. I was very slickly trapped into betraying a confidence, and too much of a coward—as yet—to tell the person who trusted me that the secret is out. Not all the way, but enough to make me uneasy. Now a third person has entered the picture, and strangely enough so that, for the first time, I can believe I might actually be in some sort of danger. Nothing specific. Just a crinkly feeling at the back of the neck. Something of value is involved, of course. What else makes people sly and dangerous? I can take some sly little steps of my own to put B and C off the scent, or just tell A the whole thing, or do both in that order, which might make me look less of an idiot. Sorry to inflict the Ian Fleming bit, Barb, but you’ll get the whole story after it’s over.”
    Barbara looked defiantly at Paul Stanial. “It is enough, dammit! Lu was like a fish in the water. Cramps drown people because they panic.”
    “Her lungs were full of water and there wasn’t a mark on her.”
    “Investigation over?”
    She became uncomfortably aware of the compulsive impact of those very blue deep-set eyes, and before she looked away she thought she saw amusement.
    “I can give it the television treatment if you’d be more at home with that, Miss Larrimore.” He deepened his voice. “By God, little lady, this is more than coincidence, or my name ain’t Private Eye Maloney.” In his normal tone he said, “Or we can deal with facts. And when we can connect several facts with a supposition, we can check out the supposition.”
    “Please. I’m sorry.”
    “It’s hardly ever dramatic, Miss Larrimore. People hear about the dramatic ones and they remember the dramatic ones. And for everyone like that, there’s a thousand little dirty ones nobody remembers. And lots of times there’s nothing at all. You wait and watch and talk and think and you end up with nothing at all. You have to know that.” For a moment his poise was uncertain. “You’re another fact, you know.”
    “How?”
    “Complaints are rated by the people who make them. You seem like an organized person. Was your sister, too?”
    “Organized? She was a very stable person, Mr. Stanial. She didn’t exaggerate things or create mysteries. Neither do I.”
    “So the letter is more valid and the complaint is more valid. Do you follow me?”
    “I think so.”
    “A little background would help. On both of you.”
    “The Larrimore girls,” she said with a trace of bitterness, taking the proffered cigarette, leaning to the light. “She was the pretty one. The proper social standing, but not the money. Oh, little bits came in, decently inherited from great-uncles and so. on, enough to make the college thing a little bit less of a scramble, but still a scramble. Daddy died when we were small, right in the midst of a business gamble which might have worked out if he’d lived. Mother is the sort of woman who would never marry again. So there was reluctant charity from both sides of the family, always called something else. And an old apartment on the wrong end of a good street. Mother collapsed and Daddy’s maiden sister, Aunt Jen, came to hold it all together temporarily. She found the