The Corpse Without a Country Read Online Free Page B

holding the manila envelope. “Any other news?”
    He said, “The Coast Guard found the boat Tom rented. It was floating in the east bay on Boundary Island. They haven’t come up with anything on the blonde you say buzzed you.”
    I said, “She was probably just some fat-headed vacationist full of beer and empty of brains. One of those stupid hotrod boaters.”
    It was his turn to grunt. I agreed with him. Neither of us liked the theory. The blonde had come too close to me and been too sharp with her searchlight for the encounter to have been merely casual.
    I headed for the door. The boss said, “Be careful, Peter. This case is beginning to stink like a hold full of unrefrigerated fish.”
    I said, “I’m always careful. That’s why I’ve lasted so long with this outfit.” I shut the door quietly. I couldn’t bear to watch him suffer about Tom any longer.
    I stopped in the doorway to look at Emily Calvin. She was folding a letter. She licked the flap of the envelope and then remembered to put in the letter. All of her movements were painfully slow and rather awkward.
    She hadn’t been with us more than three months and I hadn’t really got to know her well yet. But I had seen her enough to know that tonight something about her was different. I continued to watch her, trying to figure out where the difference was.
    She got to her feet and glanced at me. She looked down quickly, and I could have sworn she was blushing. Then I got the difference. She was wearing no make-up and she wasn’t dressed for the office. She was the kind of girl whom make-up helped. It hid her muddy complexion and filled out her thin lips and enlarged her rather small eyes. And she was a girl who was helped by clothes. She was tall and big, here and there. When she dressed to show off the better parts of her anatomy, her complexion and mouth and eyes lost their importance. But tonight she was in paint-stained jeans and a loose sweater. They didn’t do very much for her.
    I said, “If you’re going down, Miss Calvin, I’ll go with you. And if I can take you any place …” I stopped because she was flushing again. I added, “This isn’t the best part of town for a woman alone at night.”
    She nodded. “Thanks.”
    We walked down the dimly lit hallway to the elevator. Our offices were on the tenth floor of a building not far from the waterfront. The town had started there, as so many seaport cities had, but as it grew and prospered, the business district moved eastward until now it was almost to the Inlet, our big salt water lake. This older section had degenerated into a honky-tonk area, fringed by warehouses and small wholesalers. At night it was not very savory.
    As we stepped into the creaky six-by-six box the building owners called an elevator, Emily Calvin seemed to find enough courage to speak to me. She said, “I’m awfully sorry about Tom, Mr. Durham. And I feel terrible about that taped message.”
    She was just a kid, twenty-one at the outside. I had been about to question her concerning the tape, but now I decided not to. She sounded miserable enough without my making her feel worse. I said, “That kind of thing happens.”
    She gave me what I took for a grateful smile. I smiled back. She flushed and a strange, soupy expression oozed onto her features. I pressed the button for the main floor and the elevator hiccoughed and began to clank slowly downward.
    She said, “I was kind of irritated when Mr. Harbin called me tonight and asked me to come down and do some work. But when I heard about Tom, I was glad I could help a little.”
    I examined her costume in the light from the midget bulb in the ceiling. “I hope he didn’t take you from anything important.”
    She said in a mournful voice, “I was down at the Pad listening to that divine Ridley Trillian.”
    I had read about Ridley Trillian. He was the darling of Puget City’s small but determinedly beat generation. A young member of the local college’s English