by Basil Copper
“You’d better put that down,” she said. “You can only do one thing properly at a time.”
“What I was thinking …” I said a while afterwards, straightening my tie, “we both need a holiday. I’m not due in Washington until late fall. Three weeks in Florida wouldn’t do either of us any harm.”
“That sounds nice, Mike,” she said, kissing me again. This one was more formal but it still set me tingling all the way down to my socks.
“Expenses paid?” she said.
“Expenses paid,” I said.
She went and sat down at the desk again and looked at the walls.
“Just thinking what to wear,” she said. “It’ll be hot in Florida.”
“That’ll be a change,” I said.
Just then the phone rang. Stella picked it up. She handed it to me.
“My name is Elihu Q. Stich,” said a prissy voice. I sighed and handed the phone back to Stella. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and turned back to me.
“His mother-in-law’s missing. He wants you to find her.”
“He must be nuts,” I said.
Stella took down a few notes and then hung up. I sat and smoked and puzzled out that loose end. As it happened I didn’t get the answer until some while after, when we got back from Florida, which is another story.
It came in the mail. There seemed to be more cheques than bills these days, which made a change. I sat admiring my tan in the telephone mirror and sifting the letters. It was almost at the bottom.
It was just a card with a coloured view, and a few inked words on the reverse. It said, “Have fun, Mike. Feel like a million dollars. Wish you were here.”
She didn’t sign it, but she didn’t have to. The postmark was Nicaragua. I passed the card to Stella to read. I sat smoking, listening to the traffic on the boulevard. It was still hot, looked to get hotter.
Funny thing about Carol. You never can tell about dames. The card put the last piece on the board.
I didn’t tell Tucker. It wouldn’t have done any good and I had to think of his ulcers. It wasn’t really Nicaragua, but I know it was some place where they wouldn’t think of looking in a million years.
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