Read Online Murder in the Wind by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online

construction lasted well into the tourist season, despite State Road Department assurances that it would be done by Christmas. As a consequence, many southbound tourists went over the detour down the narrow sand road that wound through sparse stands of pine and then cut through the heavy brush near the river. Many of the tourists had cameras and a few of them, more aware of pictorial values than most, stopped on the stretch between the two wooden bridges to take a picture of a strange old deserted house quite near the sand road. It was a ponderous and ugly old house built of cypress, decorated with the crudest of scroll saw work. It was weathered to a pale silvery gray. The shuttered windows were like blinded eyes. The house sat solidly there and you thought that once upon a time someone had taken pride in it and had ornamented it with the scroll work. It was like a heavy gray old woman wearing crude and barbaric jewelry.
    Then the bridge was opened and there was no one to take pictures of the house. No one to see it except for the infrequent local fishermen who knew the times when snook came up the Waccasassa from the Gulf and could be caught from the larger of the two wooden bridges.
    It was almost noon on Wednesday, the seventh of October, that the concrete highway bridge became blocked.
    Dix Marshall had picked up the load in New Orleans and it was consigned to Tampa. He knew from the way the rig handled that they had loaded it as close to the limit as they dared. The inside rubber on the two rear duals was bald and it felt to him as though the whole frame of the trailer was a little sprung. It had an uneasy sideways motion on long curves to the left. But the diesel tractor was a good one. New and with a rough sound, but with a lot of heart to it. That was a break. Usually the company kept the best tractors off the flat runs, saved them for the mountain routes. Once he’d made this same run with a job you’d have to shift down three times on a four per cent grade. It was six hundred and sixty-five miles from New Orleans to Tampa, and he hadn’t gotten a very good start out of New Orleans on Tuesday. He’d felt so woozy after the fight with Gloria that he’d almost asked the dispatcher if he could have a helper on the run. There was the usual bunk behind the cab seat. But the company didn’t believe in double wages for a run this short.
    Along about midnight he’d gotten so groggy he’d pulled off somewhere near Pensacola and climbed back in the bunk on the sour blankets and corked off. When he woke up it was still dark and he felt a little better, but he felt he’d slept too long.
    He wanted this one to be over in a hurry. There would be a load to take on in Tampa consigned to Atlanta, and a load in Atlanta for Biloxi and maybe a short haul load from Biloxi back into New Orleans—he wouldn’t know until he got there. He wanted it to be a short trip because he wanted to get back because every time he thought of what Gloria might be doing, he felt sick enough to gag.
    Dix Marshall was a small man in his early thirties with thick shoulders and husky tattooed arms. He had thick brown hair which he wore combed straight back, large rather expressive brown eyes, a long upper lip and very bad teeth. He had been driving a truck since fifty-one when he got out of the army and he had been married to Gloria for the last seven years. They had lived in a trailer until the second kid came and then they had moved to a small rented house on the northeast edge of New Orleans.
    He had awakened in the truck and he drove toward the dawn thinking about Gloria and feeling sick about the whole mess and wondering just what the hell you did. Did you kill them? What did you do? He knew that all he wanted to do was get back as soon as he could and talk to her some more and maybe they could figure out how it would be for both of them in the future.
    She was still a dish. Not so much of a dish as before, but still a dish. Between the two