Read Online Fit to Die by Joan Boswell - Free Book Online

things. Take that crazy jazz whooping out of the new Victrola the boss had brought back from Rochester, and that loopy hat with the scarlet feather that came from no bird he had ever seen, and the martini she was lapping up like a kitten at the cream pitcher. And the boss. She liked the boss. But Gunboat would not have laid odds on how much. She was a dark horse that way. Look at thehandsome pill stringing her along now.
    â€œIt’d take a month of Sundays to sort through all the jokers who wanted to kill Pilgrim,” said the pill, one Lester Ketcheson. He was so right about that. Harry Pilgrim was dead six years, but even tonight, you could swing a stick in the speakeasy and hit a half-dozen people who had wanted to do the chump in. It bothered Gunboat, though, that after all this time the boss was still the odds-on favourite. Oh well, he thought, at least the boys in the backroom kept Ketcheson steady at two-to-one.
    â€œAnd here you are, Les,” said Miss Doyle, “back at the scene of the crime after six years. You must have some vital but overlooked clue that once known will reveal all.”
    â€œWish I could help,” Ketcheson said agreeably. “But I had just popped in to conduct a little business and take the boat home before that crumb Pilgrim bought the farm.” He was watching his language in front of a lady or he would have used a different word for crumb. But those years in stir had not turned Ketcheson crude. He was still a fine-looking, loose-jointed know-it-all, wearing his hat, if you called that lousy piece of felt a hat, indoors to hide the work of the prison barber. His jacket was a dog’s breakfast, too, lopsided like it was buttoned wrong. Gunboat supposed he hadn’t had time to get a snazzier one, given that he had only been sprung that morning.
    â€œThe most interesting part of the puzzle is the gunshot, of course,” said Miss Doyle. “It’s something right out of a melodrama. A pair of doomed lovers bursts into the room screaming blue murder about a body by the croquet hoops. And then the topper, a shot rings out. I hear the girl fainted, which must have been a lovely touch. It really happened that way, didn’t it, Gunboat? It isn’t a bit of embroidery stitched on over the years?”
    It wasn’t. It had been a helluva scene, the room more or less quiet with the orchestra taking a break. Then Pilgrim’s son and the young housemaid Harry Jr. was so nuts about ran screaming in. The pair had just calmed down enough to gasp out something about a murder when the gunshot blasted outside.
    â€œYou couldn’t touch that for dramatic effect,” Miss Doyle said with satisfaction. “A gunshot after the body is discovered. As a plot twist it is second to none.”
    â€œSomebody was just making sure the old crumb was really dead,” said Ketcheson, tugging at the frayed collar of his open-necked shirt. “Harry Pilgrim was an A-one louse. You’d have had to stand in line to do him in, and the line was pretty long that night.”
    True enough, Gunboat thought. It had been a big crowd, even for a Friday. Back then Pilgrim’s Rest had been a high-class club for smug folk who wore badges on their coats. They’d thought a lot of Harry Pilgrim then because he did not smoke, drink, bet, chew gum or talk loudly. It didn’t matter he was mean as cat’s piss. They came in the dozens, sailing pricey boats up to the dock, liking that the hotel was on an island in the St. Lawrence River, for the exclusive use of rich people fishing a little, shooting a little and gossiping a lot.
    Things had changed after the War, but the private locale was an even bigger draw now Prohibition had turned it into a gin joint. They still came in the dozens, still sailing pricey boats, but now they wanted to smoke, drink, gamble and brush up against wickedness. Now the smug folks thought a lot of the boss because he never boasted, never