We All Killed Grandma by Fredric Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

some reason. But there wasn’t any way out now, so I said okay. I waited around until he’d washed up and then we went out the back way and got in an old Buick in the lot back of the garage. I wasn’t too crazy about the idea; I’d just wanted to talk cars with Joe.
    It was all right, though. Joe had two kids, but they were nice kids and I liked them. His wife knew something about cars and even the kids knew more than, say, Arch did. We talked cars and ate pot roast and then Jane, Joe’s wife, took the kids upstairs to put them to bed and then Joe broke open the bottle I’d insisted on buying on the way out and we drank brandy and talked cars some more. Just what I’d been looking for, an evening with someone who hadn’t known me well enough to make me feel strange in not remembering them. I had a hunch I knew Joe now as well as I’d known him before—and I was genuinely meeting his wife for the first time. Pretty soon she came back down and joined us and we talked cars some more; it turned out she knew a Continental from a Zephyr and knew my Lincoln was a Continental because Joe had told her about it. It turned out, too, that she knew more about cars than about drinking; two brandies made her sleepy and she went upstairs to turn in at nine o’clock. What seemed like a few minutes after that I saw that it was eleven. I tried to phone for a taxi, but Joe insisted on driving me home.
    It wasn’t until after he’d left me that I realized that I still didn’t know his last name. It didn’t matter. Maybe I hadn’t known it before.
    I slept that night for the first time since Monday night without dreaming vague dreams that I couldn’t remember even in the instant of awakening, only that I had been dreaming and that the dreams had been bad.
    I got up so early that I had to kill time drinking four cups of coffee so I wouldn’t get to the garage too early. Joe would be on at nine and I allowed him half an hour to have the car checked and ready and my timing was right The Linc was downstairs at the gas pump. It looked new and shiny and like a million dollars.
    I spent the morning driving sixty miles toward nowhere and then sixty miles back and at a few minutes before noon I parked in front of the address Arch had given me for Pete Radik. It was an old building that had once been a rich man’s mansion and was now a rundown rooming house. It had probably once had a spacious yard, but now it crouched, cowering, between two tall new apartment buildings.
    I went up the steps and through the door. There was a hall and a table at one side of it on which lay incoming mail and there was a bell button with a card beside it that said “Ring for Landlady.” I had neglected to ask Arch about the location of Radik’s room so I was about to ring for landlady when a door opened across the hall behind me and a voice said, “Rod. Come in.”
    He was short and plump and cheerful looking. He grinned at me and said, “From what I hear, I should introduce myself. I’m Pete.” He stuck out a hand and I took it. I liked him.
    His room wasn’t big, but there were two overstuffed chairs in it. I took one and he sprawled himself in the other, throwing his legs up over the arm.
    He said, “Let me brief you. Peter John Radik, Pete to you. Twenty-seven, single, unattached. We’ve known one another four years. Don’t remember where or how we met first time—touch of amnesia on my part, although I could probably remember if I tried hard enough. We’ve been fairly close friends for about three years—seen one another an average of once a week or thereabouts. I had dinner with you and Robin, sometimes bringing a current girl friend, maybe once a month. Sometimes repaid by having ticketsfor a show for the three—or four if I was dragging a femme—of us. Principal mutual interest, conversation—about practically anything. Details later, when and as they come up—unless you want to ask me any specific ones now.”
    “Not right now,”