Free A Purple Place for Dying by John D. MacDonald Page B

snapshot from a compartment in it. She and her brother were standing squinting and smiling in the sunlight, with one of the campus buildings behind them. He wore a pale suit and his necktie was crooked. She said the picture was over a year old. John Webb was tall, narrow, pallid, hollow-chested. He had an untidy shock of black hair. His smile was pleasant. He did not look like the sort of man Mona would have been interested in. He looked vague and anxious to please. But you can never tell. Maybe, after Cube and Jass, she'd had her fill of forceful males.
    The two-engine plane came in a few minutes early. There were three or four to get off, three or four to get on. They wheeled the steps up to the door forward of the wing. I followed the passengers up. The smiling stewardess held out her hand for my ticket. The smile was habitual. The uniform was navy blue and pink. She was a taffy blonde, a little too hefty for her skirt, her lip dewed with the sudden perspiration of the heat at ground level.
    "I'm not a passenger," I said. "I just wondered if you had this flight yesterday."
    "Yes sir?"
    I showed her the picture. "Do you remember this man? Tall and dark and thin. He was with a sizeable blonde. They both wore sun glasses. They got on here and went to the end of the line."
    "Yes, I remember that couple."
    "This was the man?"
    "I don't know. I thought the man looked… tougher than this man somehow. I remember them because I had… well, not trouble, really. We had a light load. They had a bottle. We're not supposed to permit that. But you know how it is. There was an old lady in front of them. She complained to me. She said they were talking dirty. I moved her to another seat. They weren't being particularly loud." She looked at her watch.
    "Do you remember how they were dressed? Or anything else in particular about them?"
    "She wore a pale blue seersucker suit and red sandals with high heels, and she had a big red purse. That's where the bottle was. I don't remember about him. Dark slacks and a light jacket, I think. He had a long stringy neck and some little scars here, below his ear. Let me see, they were on the port side, so they would be on the right side of his neck. Those operations they do for glands. Sir, I'm sorry but I have to…"
    "Thank you very much. What's your name?"
    "Houser. Madeline Houser."
    I went back down the steps. They were pulled away, the door dogged tight. As I walked back to the terminal, they turned to taxi and the air blast pressed against my back, hurrying me along, kicking up spirals of dust and gum wrappers.
    Isobel was waiting inside the door. I took her over to the lounge chairs facing the tinted glass and the runways and sat beside her and told her what I had learned from Madeline.
    She shook her head sadly, her mouth puckering. "It wasn't John. Nothing fits. No scars on his neck. He wouldn't talk that way. Where is he? What happened to him? Will you tell the police what that stewardess said?"
    "Let me keep this picture for a while."
    "Certainly. Should I report John as missing? Won't that stir something up?"
    "We should be more certain just what we're going to stir up."
    She hit the arm of the chair with her fist. "Why are you so hesitant? Certainly this is a police matter now. Maybe I should phone the newspapers. Damn it, we can't just sit here!"
    "It's better than rushing off in all directions."
    "He could be tied up somewhere, all alone, sick.
    "So if you start all the sirens screaming, Isobel, anybody who knows anything about it is going to dig a hole and crawl in and wait it out. We need to know more. We need to get some small idea of who did it, who would benefit, why it was done. All this wasn't just an impulse. It has to make some kind of sense. I want to talk to the lawyer she retained. He's from outside the county. Belasco. But I don't know his name."
    "I know his name. Wait a moment. I'll remember it. I heard John mention it when he talked to Mona on the phone. It begins with an