Read Online Cape Fear by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page A

Carol was getting them back to work. Nancy wore very short red shorts, old and faded, and a yellow linen halter. Her legs were long and brown and slim, beautifully shaped. She worked the sanding block with both hands, turning lithely at the waist. The smooth young muscles bunched and lengthened under the sheen and texture of her back.
    After Gil left he worked again, steadily, and by one o’clock Carol announced it was time for a lunch break. They would run home and eat and come back. It was then that Nancy announced, quite demurely, that she had told Tommy Kent what they’d be doing and he had said he might stop around and help, so, if it was all right, she would stay and keep working and they could bring her back a sandwich, please.
    Sam drove Carol and the boys home. Mike Turner was sitting on the front porch, waiting for Jamie. Carol made hefty sandwiches and a giant pitcher of iced tea. As she was wrapping Nancy’s sandwich, Carol said, “You itching to get back to work?”
    “I’d like to get that hull painted before dark.”
    “I’m going to make Bucky take a nap. He’s completely pooped. He’ll yelp at the idea, but he’ll cork off in about ten seconds. You go on ahead and I’ll bring the boys down in an hour or so.”
    He took the MG and drove back to the boat yard. He walked around the shed, carrying the sandwich and a small thermos of iced tea. Nancy was sitting on her haunches, sanding the undercurve of the hull, a difficult place to get at. She smiled up at him.
    “No dreamboat yet?”
    “Not yet, Daddy. Nobody says that any more.”
    “What’s a good expression?”
    “Well … he resonates me.”
    “Good Lord!”
    “Please just set that stuff down, Daddy. I want to finish this one place first.”
    He went over and put the sandwich and thermos on the sawhorse. As he was unbuttoning his shirt, he had his back to Nancy. He stopped, motionless, his finger tips touching the third button. Max Cady sat on a low pile of timbers twenty feet away. He had a can of beer and a cigar. He wore a yellow knit sports shirt and a pair of sharply creased slacks in a shade of cheap electric blue. He was smiling at Sam.
    Sam walked over to him. It seemed to take a long time to walk twenty feet. Cady’s smile didn’t change.
    “What are you doing here?” Sam kept his voice low.
    “Well, I’m having a beer, Lieutenant, and I’m smoking this here cigar.”
    “I don’t want you hanging around here.”
    Cady looked quietly amused. “So the man sells me a beer and I’m thinking about maybe renting a boat. I haven’t fished since I was a kid. Fishing any good in the lake?”
    “What do you want?”
    “That’s your boat, hey?” He gestured with the cigar, winked with obscene significance and said, “Nice lines, Lieutenant.”
    Sam looked back and saw Nancy sitting on her heels, the short red shorts pulled to strained tightness around the young hips.
    “God damn it, Cady, I—”
    “A man has a nice family and a boat like that and a jobwhere he can take off when he feels like it, it must be nice. Go out into the lake and mess around. When you’re locked up you think of things like that. You know. Like dreaming.”
    “What are you after? What do you want?”
    The small deep-set brown eyes changed, but the smile still exposed the cheap white teeth. “We started pretty near even back there in forty-three, Lieutenant. You had a fancy education and a commission and little gold bars, but we both had a wife and a kid. Did you know that?”
    “I remember hearing you were married.”
    “I got married when I was twenty. The boy was four when you got me sent up. I saw him when he was a couple weeks old. Mary dumped me after I got life. She never even visited. They make it easy to do when you’re in for life. I signed the law papers. And I never got another letter. But my brother wrote me how she got married again. Married a plumber there in Charleston, West Virginia. Had a whole litter of kids. My brother