The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross MacDonald Read Free Book Online

profession. The Army came to agree with me, as it happened. They retired him after the war, very much against his will. His first wife, Pauline, divorced him about the same time.”
    “Why, if you don’t mind my asking?”
    “You’d have to ask her. She went to Nevada one day and got a divorce and married another man—a retired dentist named Keith Hatchen. They’ve lived in Mexico ever since. I suppose Pauline and her dentist have a right to whatever happiness they can muster. But it left poor Mark with nothing to fill his life but his guns and his sports and the Blackwell family history which he has been trying to write for lo these many years.”
    “And Harriet,” I said.
    “And Harriet.”
    “I’m beginning to get the picture. You say he’s changed in the past year. Has anything special happened, besides Harriet’s taking up with Damis?”
    “Mark took up with me last fall,” she said with a one-sided smile.
    “You don’t strike me as a malign influence.”
    “Thank you. I’m not”
    “I had the impression that you’d been married longer than that.” It was partly a question and partly an expression of sympathy.
    “Did you now? Of course I’ve been married before. And I’ve known Mark and Harriet for a great many years, practically since she was a babe in arms. You see, my late husband was very close to Mark. Ronald was related to the Blackwells.”
    “Then you probably know a lot of things you haven’t told me,” I said.
    “Every woman does. Isn’t that your experience, Mr. Archer?”
    I liked her dry wit, even if it was cutting me off from further information. I made a gesture that took in the big house and the roses and the gap in the boxwood hedge where Harriet’s car had last been seen.
    “Do you think I should go on with this?”
    She answered deliberately: “Perhaps you had better. Mark certainly needs another man to guide his hand and advise him—not that he’s terribly good at taking advice. I liked the way you handled this crisis just now. It could have erupted into something terrible.”
    “I wish your husband realized that”
    “He does. I’m sure he does, though he won’t admit it.” Her dark eyes were full of feeling. “You’ve done us all a good turn, Mr. Archer, and you’ll do us another by staying with us in this. Find out what you can about Damis. If you can give him a clean bill of health, morally speaking, it should do a lot to reconcile Mark to the marriage.”
    “You’re not suggesting a whitewash job on Damis?”
    “Of course not. I’m interested in the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. We all are. Now if you’ll excuse me I think I’d better go in and look after my husband. Holding his hand seems to be my function in life these days.”
    She wasn’t complaining, exactly, but I detected a note of resignation. As she turned away, very slim in her linen sheath, I caught myself trying to estimate her age. If she had known the Blackwells since Harriet was a baby, and had come to know them through her first husband, she must have married him more than twenty years ago. Which suggested that she was over forty.
    Well, so was I.

chapter
6
    I USED B LACKWELL’S KEY to let myself into the beach house. Nothing had changed in the big upstairs room, except that there were black paper ashes in the fireplace. They crumbled when I tried to pick them up on the fire shovel. The painting hung on its easel, still gleaming wet in places. In the light that slanted through the glass doors, the spot of cobalt blue which Damis had added last glared at me like an eye.
    I backed away from the picture, trying to understand it, and went down the stairs to the master bedroom. The louvered doors of the closet were swinging open. It had been cleared out. There was nothing in the chest of drawers, nothing in the bathroom but some clean towels. The back bedroom was empty.
    I moved back into the front bedroom and went through it carefully. The wastebasket had been emptied, which