Read Online The Price of Murder by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online

starting with the little one. She sat in a limber way, without strain, the inside of her sharply crooked knee warm against the side of her face. Her dressing table had a center mirror as well as two side mirrors at an angle. She heard him and glanced into the side mirror on the right and saw him in the doorway, leaning against the frame, hand in the pocket of the faded khakis, his expression cold and thoughtful.
    She looked back down at her foot and started on the nail of the third toe, working carefully. “It looks like your brother is in some kind of trouble,” she said.
    “He’s got trouble. Maybe we’ve got trouble, too.”
    “How could we have trouble?”
    She heard him cross the room behind her, heard the sound of the bed as he sat on it. When he spoke the harshness of his voice startled her. “Stop that damn nonsense and turn around. I want to talk to you.”
    “Just a minute till I finish.”
    “Now, damn it!”
    She put the brush back in the bottle, sighed audibly, swiveled around so that she faced him. “I don’t know what you got to get so hot about,” she said, keeping her face still but searching his face for proof that Keefler could have told him anything.
    “Why don’t you put some clothes on?”
    “Do I look disgusting or something?”
    “Stop fencing with me, Lucille. Put some clothes on.”
    She gave him a mocking look. A sexy mocking look, like Grace Kelly had used in that picture where Cary Grant was a jewel thief, and he was being blamed for the way jewels were being stolen because they were using hismethods, but he’d given up stealing long ago and he had to prove it wasn’t him. She and Ruthie had practiced that look, and she had got it down just right, Ruthie said. You put your eyelids part way down and looked slantwise and smiled in a way that sort of turned one comer of your mouth down. She leaned over, a long lithe stretching, and caught the sleeve of the beach coat and pulled it to her and slipped into it, and turned the collar up the way it looked the best and said, “Better, darling?” drawling the words out slow.
    “You lied to Keefler,” he said.
    She felt uncertain then. He didn’t look like Lee at all. He didn’t look friendly. He was more like Danny all of a sudden. Her voice was pitched higher. “If that man told you something about me, he was lying!”
    Instead of looking angrier, Lee suddenly looked very tired. “Seel, I don’t expect you to understand this. But I’m going to take a stab at it. We’ve got security. Whether you believe it or not, I’ve got a certain position, and I’m given a certain amount of respect.”
    She caught at the opening for counterattack, an opening too wide to ignore. “Yes, you’ve got everything. You’ve got a big deal. In ten years maybe you’ll be making as much as a good carpenter. I can’t even buy a lipstick without your showing me all the figures about how much it costs to …”
    “Shut up, for God’s sake. And listen. Keefler isn’t normal. There’s something twisted about him. He treated me as if … as if I was some petty thief in a lineup.”
    “Didn’t you explain how you’re a big important man around Brookton Junior College, dear?”
    “That doesn’t work with Keefler,” he said, ignoring her obvious sarcasm. “I never thought it was a mistake coming back here until now. I didn’t plan on a Keefler. If he wants to make trouble for me, he can. He can use Danny as a lever. And he can use … something else that happened a long time ago. He can make it look bad. As long as we stay clean, he won’t bother, I don’t think. But it’s damn important that we stay clean. He’ll pick up Danny, or somebody will, and then Keefler will be off our neck. It’s a bad break for Danny, and I’m damn sorry about it,but it’s his own fault. I sat there, Seel, and I saw you lie to him. I know when you lie. I’ve proved that to you before. You’re a poor liar. A lot of time I don’t bother. It isn’t