Melting Clock Read Online Free Page B

marketing idea of selling them in hardware and appliance stores like ladders and coping saws.
    I was feeling pretty good when I turned the corner at Heliotrope and drove over to Arlington to head north. Crossing the street when I got to Arlington were a man and a woman. The woman looked like Anne. I drove past and looked back. It wasn’t Anne.
    I had paid No-Neck Arnie fifteen bucks to install a radio in the Crosley. Crosleys came without frills—just a speedometer, a fuel gauge, and a water gauge, but I needed company when I drove. One of the Eberle brothers was singing “This Love of Mine.” I turned the radio off and paid attention to the road.

3

    T he address wasn’t hard to find. It was set in white stones on a black marble slab. The house itself, a big brick English-looking thing with slanted red roofs set back about a hundred yards from the street on a paved driveway, couldn’t be seen through the small forest of trees in front of it. Since there weren’t any guards, walls, or gates, whoever owned it probably wasn’t in the movies or the rackets.
    There were two cars in the driveway, though I could see a garage at the side of the house with its doors up and enough room for the Beverly Hills fire department. Inside the garage a man with his back to the driveway was washing a car the size of Hoover Dam and the color of a robin’s egg. I parked behind a white 1941 Lincoln convertible with its top down. Parked in front of the Lincoln was something I’d never seen before.
    I walked over to look at it and still didn’t know what I was looking at. It looked a little like a Cord but …
    “It’s a Hupmobile,” came a voice behind me.
    The guy was about forty, tall, thin, a lopsided Henry Fonda type, only older with graying temples. He was wearing grease-smeared overalls. His hair flowed forward, almost covering his eyes. A spot of oil in the shape of a lima bean smudged his cheek. He was wiping his hands with a once-white rag.
    “Only three hundred nineteen of them made,” he said. “Got it for less than eleven hundred. Keep it in shape, it should be worth forty or fifty thousand in twenty years. Should have bought a dozen of them but where would I put them?”
    He looked around and it seemed to me he had enough room for at least twenty-five or thirty of the Hups.
    He held out his hand and I took it. The grip was firm and the smile sincere.
    “Barry T. Zeman,” he said.
    “Toby Peters,” I said.
    “That automobile J.T. is working on,” he said, nodding toward the blue Hoover Dammobile. “A 1940 Cadillac Fleetwood Series town car.”
    “Looks great.”
    “Take care of that Crosley of yours and it’ll be worth something in twenty years,” he said, nodding at my car.
    “I need it for transportation,” I said.
    “The future,” he said, pushing his unruly hair back. “That’s where I live. That’s how I made my money.”
    “The present,” I said. “That’s where I live and why I don’t have any money. This is your place?”
    “My place, and my wife’s. You’re the detective.”
    “I’m the detective,” I admitted, following him up the stone walk to the front door, which opened suddenly. A woman the size of Alaska stepped out, closed the door, and looked over our heads down the driveway. Her yellow-white hair was bun-tight and her cloth coat was open, revealing a serious white uniform. I glanced back over my shoulder to the driveway, where a cab was pulling up. Zeman and I parted so the woman could get through.
    He leaned back in. “Find the paintings and the clocks or tell them as soon as you can that you can’t do it,” he said softly. “I’ll give you five hundred cash if this is all over either way in two days.”
    Behind us the cab door opened and closed and, a beat later as Zeman opened his front door, the cab took off.
    “Five hundred,” he repeated. “I’ve got an investment in Salvador Dali. Quite a collection, thirty paintings, drawings, and even some jewelry and