Free The Way Some People Die by Ross MacDonald

sign, OASIS INN , hung over the entrance of the largest building, which fronted on the road.
    She turned her car into an empty space between two others, switched off the engine and headlights. We got out together.
    As we walked down the line of cars towards the entrance, a man emerged from the shadows under the stucco portico. He strode towards us, literally shouting: “Marjorie! Where have you been?”
    She stood still, frightened stiff, unable to answer him. He stepped up close to her, tall and wide and angry. “Where have you been?”
    I said: “Fortunately for me, your wife decided to go for a midnight drive. I was lost in the desert, my car broke down, and she gave me a lift to civilization.” This was civilization. And I was back on the little-boy-lost routine again.
    “What made you do that, Marjorie?” One of his hands closed over one of her arms. The flesh bulged out on either side of it, and she winced.
    I thought of hitting him. He was big enough to make it worth while, a powerful-looking heavyweight with a nose like a battering ram. It would give me a good deal of satisfaction, but on the other hand it woudn’t help Marjorie. Henry would have the rest of their life together to take it out on her, and he looked like the man to do just that.
    “Why shouldn’t I go for a ride by myself?” She jerked her arm free. “What do you care? You go away and neglect me all the time.”
    “Now, darling, that’s not fair. You had me worried sick when you didn’t come home.”
    “Were you really worried, Henry?”
    “You know I was. I can’t have my sweet girl wandering around in the desert at all hours of the night.” His pale eyes glared in my direction, as if I had kidnapped his bride.
    Marjorie was doing fine, it seemed. I thanked her and said good night. She fluttered a hand at me, then tucked it possessively under the big man’s arm.

CHAPTER
11     
It was nearly eight by my watch
, and delivery trucks were honking their matins, when I got back to town. I was feeling accident-prone, and I drove within the speed limit. The twisted scrap of mind the night had left me was concentrated on Keith Dalling. He had escorted me gracefully into a very queer setup, and gracefully run out. I owed him an opportunity to explain. His yellow Buick was in the parking lot behind the Casa Loma. I eased my car in beside it and got out. The Buick was locked and empty.
    An outside wooden staircase led up from the parking lot to a series of long porches across the rear wall of the building. Dalling’s back door, if he had one, would be on the second floor at the far right end. A milkman ran down the stairs, a metal basket full of empty bottles clanking in each hand. “Morning,” he cried. “Up early, eh?” He disappeared down the alley.
    I climbed the stairs to the second floor and followed the veranda to the end. Dalling’s apartment had a back door, with a black 8 stenciled on it. The door was an inch ajar, and it opened wider when I knocked. An alarm clock chirped on the other side of the wall, uneager feet shuffled acrossa floor. Neither my knocking nor the neighbor’s alarm clock wakened Dalling.
    I pushed the door wide open and entered his kitchen. It was a bachelor’s kitchen done by an expressionist scene-designer, probably a Russian. The sink was brimming with dirty water in which a half-submerged pagoda of dirty dishes stood precariously. There were more dirty dishes and a bottle half full of sour milk on the folding table attached to the wall in the breakfast corner. What I could see of the linoleum floor was glazed with grime. But most of it was covered with empty whisky bottles in staggered rows, a sad little monument to Dalling’s thirst. Many of the bottles were pints and some were half-pints, which meant that Dalling had sometimes had no more than a dollar between him and sobriety.
    I picked my way across the floor to the open door of the living-room. Someone had smashed a bottle on the door frame.