Read Online The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross MacDonald - Free Book Online

south, did he say anything about going to Mexico?”
    “Not to me he didn’t.”
    “Has he ever been there?”
    “I don’t think so. He would of told me if he had.”
    “Did he ever talk about leaving the country?”
    “Not lately. He used to talk about going back to Japan someday. He spent some time there in the Korean War. Wait a minute, though. He took his birth certificate with him, I think. That could mean he was planning to leave the States, couldn’t it?”
    “It could. He took his birth certificate to Los Angeles?”
    “I guess he did, but it was a couple of weeks before that he had me looking for it. It took me hours to find it He wanted to take it along to Nevada with him. He said he needed it to apply for a job.”
    “What kind of a job?”
    “He didn’t say. He was probably stringing me, anyway.” She moved restlessly and stood over me. “You think he left the country?”
    Before I could answer her, a telephone rang in another part of the house. She stiffened, and walked quickly out of the room. I heard her voice: “This is Vicky Simpson speaking.”
    There was a long pause.
    “I don’t believe it,” she said.
    Another pause.
    “It can’t be him,” she said. “He can’t be dead.”
    I followed the fading sound of her voice into the kitchen. She was leaning on the yellow formica breakfast bar, holding the receiver away from her head as if it was a dangerous yellow bird. The pupils of her eyes had expanded and made her look blind.
    “Who is it, Mrs. Simpson?”
    Her lips moved, groping for words. “A caw—a policemandown south. He says Ralph is dead. He can’t be.”
    “Let me talk to the man.”
    She handed me the receiver. I said into the mouthpiece: “This is Lew Archer. I’m a licensed private detective working in co-operation with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office.”
    “We had a query from them this evening.” The man’s voice was slow and uncertain. “We had this body on our hands, unidentified. Their chief investigator called—fellow named Colton, maybe you know him.”
    “I know him. Who am I talking to?”
    “Leonard, Sergeant Wesley Leonard. I do the identification work for the sheriff’s department here in Citrus County. We use the L.A. facilities all the time, and we had already asked for their help on this body. Mr. Colton wanted to know if maybe it was this certain Ralph Simpson who is missing. We must have mislaid the original missing report,” he added apologetically, “or maybe we never got it in the first place.”
    “It happens all the time.”
    “Yeah. Anyway, we’re trying to get a positive identification. What’s the chances of Mrs. Simpson coming down here?”
    “Pretty good, I think. Does the body fit the description?”
    “It fits all right. Height and weight and coloring and estimated age, all the same.”
    “How did he die?”
    “That’s a little hard to say. He got pretty banged up when the bulldozer rooted him out.”
    “A bulldozer rooted him out?”
    “I’ll explain. They’re putting in this new freeway at the west end of town. Quite a few houses got condemned to the state, they were standing vacant you know, and this poor guy was buried in back of one of them. He wasn’t buried very deep. A ’dozer snagged him and brought him up when they razed the houses last week.”
    “How long dead?”
    “A couple of months, the doc thinks. It’s been dry, and he’s in pretty fair condition. The important thing is who he is. How soon can Mrs. Simpson get down here?”
    “Tonight, if I can get her on a plane.”
    “Swell. Ask for me at the courthouse in Citrus Junction. Sergeant Wesley Leonard.”
    She said when I hung up: “Oh no you don’t, I’m staying here.”
    She retreated across the kitchen, shocked and stumbling, and stood in a corner beside the refrigerator.
    “Ralph may be dead, Vicky.”
    “I don’t believe it. I don’t want to see him if he is.”
    “Somebody has to identify him.”
    “You identify