One more Sunday by John D. MacDonald

Author:John D. MacDonald [MacDonald, John D.]
Format: epub
Tags: General, FICTION, Mystery & Thrillers, Non-Classifiable
ISBN: 9780394536736
Publisher: New York : Knopf : 1984.
Published: 1984-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

Twelve

On Monday, August fifteenth, a large tropical storm, big enough to fill most of the Gulf of Mexico, recovered from two days of indecision. The weather people had named it Harold.

The velocity of the winds at the center increased almost to hurricane force, and the entire storm system abruptly headed north-northeast at increasing speed, making landfall along the entire north coast of the Gulf, from eastern Texas to Pensacola.

It carried an enormous amount of water, and by Tuesday afternoon heavy rains were falling on Lakemore and Meadows Center. The sky was so dark the Boulevard lights went on automatically. Dozens of counties in six states experienced severe flooding during a twelve-hour period with rains of anywhere from five to twelve inches.

The giant storm brought tornadoes, high winds, electrical storms which mangled trailer parks, sucked roofs off frame houses and barns, toppled power lines and blew recreational vehicles off the highways.

In midafternoon when the rain was as heavy as any he had ever heard, Roy Owen sat at the small desk in unit sixteen of the County Line Motel going over the eight pounds of computer printout and corporate financial statements Dave had sent down from Hartford by Federal Express. He had arranged for their computers to be programmed to give him the ratios he thought significant the market volume in each issue expressed as a percentage of the shares available, and related to the daily increases or decreases in the daily quote. And he paid close attention to the internal ratios of the corporations whose stock they held in the three funds. Ratios of sales to gross to net and to debt structure. He was a specialist in the different ways bad news could be weasel-worded in the footnotes to the financial statements. And he depended a great deal on the Value Line rating system.

Peggy Moon knocked and he let her in. Her dark hair was curly damp. She had clean sheets over her arm, wrapped in plastic to keep the rain off.

"I'm really sorry, Roy, but that dang Dolly didn't show up, and I'm running way late, and all I got time to do is change the sheets and pillowcases, okay? If it won't bother you."

"It won't bother me. Go ahead."

He sat back in the chair by the desk and glanced over at her as she stripped the bed. She moved in an overly energetic slapdash manner, whipping the used bedding off, yanking up the corners of the mattress to tuck the bottom sheet under.

She stopped suddenly and came over to the desk.

"Hey, I don't remember that lamp."

"I got it at the Meadows Mall, at Sears. I'll leave it here when I go. I needed a better light on these papers."

"You don't really have to leave it. Say, why all those green stripes on those sheets?"

"Standard computer printout paper, Peggy. When you have to read a column all the way across, it makes it easier not to get mixed up."

"What is all that stuff?"

"Sort of an analysis of the securities we hold in three different mutual funds.

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