The Ivory Grin by Ross MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

block.”
    “Did you go in?”
    “No, sir. I didn’t go in.”
    “Why not?”
    “She said she’d only be five minutes. Her bags, they were still packed.”
    “You could have gone in.”
    “I didn’t want to. She didn’t want me to.”
    “Lucy was passing, wasn’t she?”
    “What if she was? There is no law against passing in this state.”
    “You’re well informed,” I said. “Going to school?”
    “I just started junior college. But I’m quitting.”
    “To get married?”
    “I’ll never get married. I’ll never marry anybody now. I’ll run away and lose myself.” With his head dejected below his shoulders, he was speaking to the scarred top of the counter.
    “You’re going to have to stick around and answer a lot of questions. Pull yourself together.”
    I shook him roughly by the shoulder. He wouldn’t turn or move until the siren whooped on the highway. Then his head came up like an animal’s at bay.

CHAPTER 7 :     
A black patrol-car ground to a stop
on the gravel outside the office. A plainclothesman got out, mounted the stoop, and filled the doorway. In spite of his gray fedora and baggy gray clothes, he looked as if he had always been a policeman—had teethed on handcuffs, studied his lessons in the criminal code, pounded out his career on broken pavements, in nocturnal alleys. Scarred and seamed by fifty years of sun and other weather, his face was a relief map of life in the valley.
    “I’m Brake, lieutenant of detectives. You the one that phoned?”
    I said I was. “She’s in room seven, at the end of the court.”
    “Dead?”
    “Very.”
    Alex let out a choked noise. Brake took a step towards him and looked him over closely. “What are you doing here?”
    “Waiting for Lucy.”
    “She the one that’s dead?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You’re going to have a long wait. Did you cut her?”
    Alex looked at the detective as if he were a tree too thick to climb. “No, sir.”
    “You’re Annie Norris’s boy, aren’t you?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “How’s your mother going to like this?” Before Alex could answer, Brake turned to me: “Did he cut her?”
    “I doubt it. He stayed around after it happened. They were on their way to get married, he says.”
    “He says.”
    “I didn’t cut her,” Alex said. “I wouldn’t hurt a hair of Lucy’s head.” He was leaning slackly against the counter on his elbows, as if he no longer had a use for his body.
    The fat key-clerk came in, letting the door close softly on his heel. He moved sideways along the wall and around the end of the counter to his world of paper bosoms, dirty sheets, silent screams for assistance. The sight of death had reminded him of the buried guilts in the graveyard of his mind, and he jumped when Brake said to his back:
    “Are you the key-clerk?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I want a key to number seven, all the keys in fact.”
    “They’re both out, Mr. Brake.” He came forward placatingly, offering his quivering body as a sacrifice. “I give her one when she rented the room, and then when she came back she asked me for the duplicate. She said she lost the other. I said she’d have to pay—”
    I cut in: “The key’s in the door, lieutenant.”
    “Why didn’t you say so?”
    Brake stepped outside and summoned his driver to keep an eye on Alex. A second police-car drew up behind the first. The ring of spectators broke and re-formed around it. A uniformed sergeant pushed through them to join Brake. He had a folded tripod and camera under one arm and a fingerprint kit in the other hand. “Where’s the stiff, lieutenant?”
    “Over yonder. Call the deputy coroner?”
    “He’s on his way.”
    “She’ll spoil before we get to her, at this rate. Now take it easy, folks. Gangway.”
    The crowd made way for them and surged in their wake.
    Inside the office, Alex and his guard sat in glum intimacy on the settee. The guard was a large young cop in a blue traffic-officer’s uniform. Beside his