Read Online An Eye for an Eye by Leigh Brackett - Free Book Online

phone.”
    “Do you know where he’s living?”
    “I don’t know and I don’t care, except I wish it was Alaska or someplace.” She looked at him sharply. “Why?”
    He had the lie all ready. “Just a legal formality about the final papers.”
    What would she do if she knew the truth? Run screaming to the police? Leave town? She could hide or run away, but Carolyn couldn’t. Carolyn was trapped.
    “There isn’t any hitch about the divorce?” She was asking, as though she were afraid he might have taken some secret legal vengeance for her failure to finish paying even the low fee he had asked of her. “Nothing can go wrong with it now, can it?”
    He assured her that the divorce was all right. “But it would help me if I could get in touch with him. Didn’t he leave an address or a phone number, some way for you to get in touch with him if you changed your mind?”
    “Yes, but I don’t know if Mary Catherine kept it or not. I told her I didn’t want—”
    Someone knocked.
    Lorene jumped up. “There’s Vern now,” she said. She smiled and patted her skirt smooth over the hips and lifted her chest high, walking with quick steps to the door.
    A thick-shouldered man in a gray topcoat stepped in and caught Lorene in his arms. “Hello, honey,” he said. “Am I late?” Then he saw Ben. He let go of Lorene and said a little angrily, like one caught unawares in a private act, “Well, I didn’t know you had company.”
    He took his hat off. His hair was black, with just a touch of gray over the ears. Ben guessed him at around forty, give or take a year. He was shorter than Ben but he looked powerful. He also looked intelligent, and probably he was as decent a citizen as Lorene said he was. But he was not a man Ben would have chosen to quarrel with. He had a jaw like a granite slab.
    “Gee, Vern,” Lorene said, “Mr. Forbes isn’t company. He’s my lawyer.”
    She made the introductions and Kratich shook hands, looking closely at Ben.
    “Forbes?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Didn’t I read something in the paper the other day—Sure, I remember. Your wife was missing.”
    Damn Mr. Kratich.
    “What?” demanded Lorene excitedly, and Kratich said to her, “After we’re married I’ll teach you to read the papers. You don’t have any idea how much goes on in the world that’s interesting.”
    “Gee,” said Lorene. “I certainly didn’t see that, Mr. Forbes. I’d have called you or something. What happened? Did you find her?”
    “Yes,” said Ben. “She—”
    The lie stuck hard in his throat. Lorene waited with her bright interested gaze. And Kratich was watching him.
    “She’d had a lapse of memory,” Ben said. “She turned up at her parents’ home in Pennsylvania. The doctor thinks she must have hurt her head somehow. She’s all right now.”
    “Thank goodness for that,” Lorene said. “You must have been real worried.”
    “Yes,” said Ben. “Do you think Miss Brewer would remember about that address?”
    “It was a phone number. I suppose she would, but she’s out on a date now and I don’t know when she’ll be back. Why don’t you call her at the store tomorrow?”
    “All right. I will.”
    “There’s nothing wrong, is there?” asked Kratich. “About the divorce, I mean.”
    “No.”
    “I should hope not.” He put his arm around Lorene’s shoulders. “Poor little Lorene here, she’s had enough trouble.”
    “Yes,” said Ben. “Well. Good night.”
    He shook hands again with Kratich and said that it had been nice to meet him. He took his hat and coat from Lorene and went out.
    In the street outside the snow was still falling, scattered flakes of white on the bleak dark backdrop of the night.

 
nine
     
    Ernie MacGrath had a feeling. It was one of those things such as a man who has lived out of doors a lot will get about the weather, so that he is instantly sensitive without even knowing how to the smallest deviation from the norm. Ernie did not know weather