Read Online Death in the Polka Dot Shoes by Marlin Fitzwater - Free Book Online

I hadn’t paid much attention to Ray as we nursed his boat into an empty slip at the end of the pier. Vinnie climbed onto the pier, tied the bow line to one piling and the stern line to another. I helped Ray out of the Martha and took back the blanket, all without him saying a word. He looked like a stray animal standing on the dock. We left Ray and his cruiser at the Marina and maneuvered the Martha Claire out into the creek channel for the few hundred yard trip to the Bayfront. At least that’s the way I remembered it.
    â€œWho is he?” I asked Burl.
    Mansfield looked across the office, raised his long frame from the chair and picked up the dictionary, one of three books that I simply couldn’t start a business without. The other two were from my first year in law school. Mansfield always looked elegant, even in tan pants and a blue shirt. Sometimes, like today, he wore an ascot, which was so out of place in Parkers that it looked natural. At the Willard Hotel, I would have placed an ascot as among the most pompous of apparel, belonging either to a dandy or a nutcase. But Mansfield pulled it off, the way a fur coat looks all right in church if the lady is elegant in every stitch. Burl was that way, with leather docksider shoes that were richly brown, not scuffed or polished. His brown leather belt was wide, and catalog proper for the ensemble. I made a mental note to dress that way myself, although it seemed unlikely to happen. I just can’t seem to shake the inevitability of wrinkles.
    Mansfield Burlington picked the dictionary from my desk, flipped through the early pages, and ran his finger to the correct word. He stood erect and read from the dictionary: “Blenny. Any of several small, spiny-finned fishes of the family Blenniidae, having a long, tapering body. Blennius, a kind of fish. Blennos slime, mucus: so called from its slimy coating.”
    He looked up. “Now tell me that isn’t the man you so ceremoniously pulled from the depths of the Bay.”
    â€œThat’s him,” I replied. “But is that his reputation? Slimy?”
    â€œI rather like the term, ‘spiny-finned,’” Burl said. “Reminds me of a skinny little man I met in Paris. I commissioned a painting he never painted, but he took my money, tried to take my girlfriend, and denied it all till the day he went to jail for forgery.”
    â€œBefore you launch into another historical tirade on the French, tell me about the Blenny Man,” I said.
    â€œInsurance,” Burl said. “I think he sells it because he looks so much like death that it frightens people into buying. Also, he has no shame and will push himself into any gathering.”
    â€œBurl, I’ve never heard you so expansive in your disgust for someone,” I said. “What did this guy do to you?”
    Burl was really warming to the task. “You know when you look through the security hole in your door, and there’s a distorted face with fat cheeks looking back at you – that’s Ray Herbst. I’ve known him for years. Everything about him is distorted.”
    â€œWell, he doesn’t know much about the water,” I ventured.
    â€œMore than you think,” Burl responded. “He probably was taking a leak when he fell off the boat. That could happen to anybody. Blenny has had a hundred boats in his life; he prowls around the marshes of this place and turns up on remote islands for every crab festival there is.”
    â€œWhy are you so down on him?” I asked.
    â€œThe resort,” Burl said, looking at the floor. “He’s fighting it.”
    â€œBut so are you.”
    â€œThat makes it worse. He’s on my side,” Burl said. “But I don’t believe him. I’m telling you, Neddie, if the Blenny Man darts in here to say thanks for saving his dark heart, grab your belt cause he’s trying to steal your pants.”
    Mansfield was becoming a bit of a