The Quick Red Fox by John D. MacDonald

Author:John D. MacDonald [MacDonald, John D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-82665-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-01-08T16:00:00+00:00

Eight

Investigating a cold cold trail can be deadly dull and very discouraging. This one worked pretty well, perhaps because there were two of us, two sets of hunches, two sets of ideas, two methods of approach.

We found Caswell Edgars in Sausalito. He looked twenty pounds heavier than in the pictures. He was living in a pigpen litter in the expensive home of a skinny drift-wood blonde on the far side of fifty. She was there too, in extremely tight pants and a high girlish giggle. Any minute now Cassie was going to start working hard getting ready for a one-man show she was going to arrange for him. They had a music system that would have blown the walls out of a less substantial structure. She had soiled ankles, a grubby neck, and a black eye which had faded to saffron. They were hooked on something. From the way they acted, I suspect one of the hypnotics. The house smelled like old laundry. There was a loose and dangerous and desperate flavor about the alliance, and it was easy to imagine that in their blundering they would sooner or later manage to set fire to the place and scream with laughter until they found all exits blocked. She kept talking about poor little ole Henry, who seemed to be a husband, but I could not determine if he was living or dead. If dead, it was conceivable he was buried in the yard, under the weeds. Edgars knew absolutely nothing about any pictures. But he had no difficulty remembering the occasion. He had musician talk which he didn’t do too well. “Man, that was a bash. That little movie piece was pure stone fox. The boss fox of all time. Somebody trying to scuffle her with the pics? You never said, man.”

“No. I never said.”

“Sonny traded the waitress for the tall brunette, and then he burned. It’s a harsh way to make bread, man, that chance of burning. I read it someplace.”

“Put on my records, Cassie doll baby bug, huh?”

I don’t think either of them noticed we’d left, or cared particularly. Though it was warm in the car, Dana shuddered.

“Scratch one more contestant, Dana doll baby bug.”

“Please don’t,” she said in a thin voice.

“Like they say, lives of quiet desperation.”

“Trav?”

“Yes?”

“I think that terrace was a damned unlucky place to be. Sonny Catton, Nancy Abbott, Carl Abelle … and Caswell Edgars.”

“Punishment from on high?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe it can happen, Trav.”

• • •

She took care of Carmel with some phone calls. The M’Gruder place had been sold almost a year ago. We had less luck with newspaper accounts. I did dig up some background on M’Gruder. There had been an elder brother, killed in a war. M’Gruder’s father had invented a little gadget. Every cracking plant in the world had to have one or two of them. Vance M’Gruder had married one Patricia Gedley-Davies some three years ago in California, after apparently importing her from London. She had crewed for him in smaller sailboats.

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