The Zebra-Striped Hearse Read Online Free Page A

truffles. It looked as though Harriet had been playing house, for keeps.
    I crossed to the stairway. The man in front of the easel said: “Augh!” He wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to his canvas. Stepping softly, I went down the stairs. At their foot a narrow door opened onto outside steps which led down to the beach.
    There were two bedrooms, a large one in front and a smaller one in the rear, with a bathroom between them. There was nothing in the rear bedroom but a pair of twin beds with baremattresses and pillows. The bathroom contained a pink washbowl and a pink tub with a shower curtain. A worn leather shaving kit with the initials B.C. stamped on it in gold lay on the back of the washbowl. I unzipped it. The razor was still wet from recent use.
    The master bedroom in front, like the room above it, had sliding glass doors which opened onto a balcony. The single king-sized bed was covered with a yellow chenille spread on which women’s clothes had been carefully folded: a plaid skirt, a cashmere sweater, underthings. A snakeskin purse with an ornate gold-filled clasp that looked Mexican lay on top of the chest of drawers. I opened it and found a red leather wallet which held several large and small bills and Harriet Blackwell’s driving license.
    I looked behind the louvered doors of the closet. There were no women’s clothes hanging in it, and very few men’s. The single lonesome suit was a grey lightweight worsted number which bore the label of a tailor on Calle Juares in Guadalajara. The slacks and jacket beside it had been bought at a chain department store in Los Angeles, and so had the new black shoes on the rack underneath. In the corner of the closet was a scuffed brown samsonite suitcase with a Mexicana Airlines tag tied to the handle.
    The suitcase was locked. I hefted it. It seemed to have nothing inside.
    The door at the foot of the stairs opened behind me. A blonde girl wearing a white bathing suit and dark harlequin glasses came in. She failed to see me till she was in the room with me.
    “Who are you?” she said in a startled voice.
    I was a little startled myself. She was a lot of girl. Though she was wearing flat beach sandals, her hidden eyes were almost on a level with my own. Smiling into the dark glasses, I gave her my apologies and my story.
    “Father’s never rented the beach house before.”
    “He seems to have changed his mind.”
    “Yes, and I know why.” Her voice was high and small for so large a girl.
    “Why?”
    “It doesn’t concern you.”
    She whipped off her glasses, revealing a black scowl, and something else. I saw why her father couldn’t believe that any man would love her truly or permanently. She looked a little too much like him.
    She seemed to know this; perhaps the knowledge never left her thoughts. Her silver-tipped fingers went to her brow and smoothed away the scowl. They couldn’t smooth away the harsh bone that rose in a ridge above her eyes and made her not pretty.
    I apologized a second time for invading her privacy, and for the unspoken fact that she was not pretty, and went upstairs. Her fiancé, if that is what he was, was using a palette knife to apply cobalt blue to his canvas. He was sweating and oblivious.
    I stood behind him and watched him work on his picture. It was one of those paintings concerning which only the painter could tell when it was finished. I had never seen anything quite like it: a cloudy mass like a dark thought in which some areas of brighter color stood out like hope or fear. It must have been very good or very bad, because it gave me a
frisson
.
    He threw down his knife and stood back jostling me. His gymnasium smell was mixed with the sweeter smell of the oils. He turned with a black intensity in his eyes. It faded as I watched.
    “Sorry, I didn’t know you were there. Have you finished looking around?”
    “Enough for now.”
    “Like the place?”
    “Very much. When did you say you were moving?”
    “I don’t