A Deadly Shade of Gold by John D MacDonald

Author:John D MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780307826664
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-01-09T08:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

After breakfast I sat in umbrellaed shade while Nora swam, shirt and slacks covering the thorn wounds, my curled hand concealing the random stigmata, the girl-bite bandage also hidden under the long sleeves of the white shirt. I had some sore and creaking muscles, and a couple of bruises which felt as if they went all the way down into the bone marrow.

The revolver, sealed by a rubber band fastening into a plastic shoe bag, rested in the bottom of her toilet tank. The improvised grapnel was buried in the soft black dirt under a bush. I had rinsed the smeared stains of blood from my hands off the thin nylon rope, coiled it and stowed it in a bureau drawer. The ruined slacks and shirt were a minor problem. Nora had them stowed in her beach bag, tightly rolled. We could bury them at the beach.

She came out of the pool and returned to our table. She wore a sheath suit, vertical red and white stripes. She had explained the artifice of it to me. She said it was a suit for the underprivileged girl. The stripes were designed to be further apart at hip and breast, closer together at the waist, thus creating the illusion of more abundance than was there. She said that for some reason she could not understand, they had a most difficult time at the shop trying to keep very heavy women from buying them. I told her I hadn’t noticed she was particularly underprivileged. She said a woman’s ribs shouldn’t resemble a xylophone, nor should hip bones be capable of inflicting a nasty bruise.

She toweled her face and shoulders, fluffed her dark hair, moved her chair into the sun and frowned at me. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

“There was something between Sam and the blonde.”

“If Alma’s last name is Hitchins, and if Felicia is right, yes.”

“Then she’s been there a long time.”

“Maybe. Back and forth is a better guess, I’d say. The intermittent house guest. For a nice long stay every time.”

“Who is Gabe?”

“God knows. The relationship with Alma had a flavor of intimacy. But she seems to be in charge.”

“Do you think she wants to get the money and run?”

“What else? Maybe Menterez was a lot of laughs before something gave way in his head. But what’s there for her now? You know, she has it locked up pretty good. If anybody comes around who really wants to help him, she can keep them from getting past the gate. He is incapable of communicating with anybody. Speech is gone, but he can understand and he can write. I don’t think that fat nurse understands English. I have the idea nobody gets into that room except Alma and the fat nurse. I don’t think anybody else will get in there until he’s ready to sign a power of attorney. I would bet the bulk of his fortune is in Switzerland, but he’s likely to have a nice chunk of cash in a lock box in Mexico City.

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