Free Dead Low Tide by John D. MacDonald

Savings and Trust knew a little more. But no one of us had enough of the jigsaw pieces to make the whole puzzle.
    All I knew was that there was a lot of stuff on order, a lot of stuff on hand, a fat payroll to meet, and a dingy little bank balance with which to meet it. Whenever the operating balance had begun to get low, John would make a deposit fromanother account. If Key Estates was going to continue, somebody would have to fatten the kitty. I hoped that somebody, somewhere, would find a report from John describing exactly how he operated.
    I parked near the office. I could see Joy Kenney in there typing away. I could see a woman waiting to see me. I sat in the car for a few minutes, wondering how it was to hold that barbed razor against your throat and release the friction trigger with your bare toe. Would you shut your eyes? It was sickening. Maybe he had wanted to talk to me. Waited around, wandered around the place, found my rig and took it off the nail, and then decided there wasn’t anything to say, after all. And I’d come back with Christy, and he had gone out the back and hurried away. Then, perhaps, he’d gone out to take a look at the big dream, take a look at Key Estates, which had been going to turn him into a rich man.
    I could sense that the whole town was buzzing with it. I could see people standing in shop doorways, looking over at me and at the office. I went on into the office. Joy glanced up at me and murmured good morning and I knew at once that she knew. Her face was waxy. She looked through those eyes at me, and I felt as if the eyes were both long tunnels, and she was crouched ’way back in there, looking through the tunnels, hiding back there where nobody could find out what she thought or felt.
    The one who was waiting was the lady who wanted to build the motel. Happy Saturday morning. She was wound up tight. No salutation. No weather comments. “Young man, all day yesterday I thought about the rudeness of Mr.Long and the way he turned me down after promising to build for me, and I wish you to inform him that I have seen my attorney and if he knows what is good for him, he will go ahead with what he promised to do. I am not accustomed to being spoken to in the manner in which he spoke to me, and furthermore, I—” She stopped and stared at me, aware that I was trying to say something. “What is it? Has he reconsidered?”
    “He’s dead.”
    She stared at me some more and then sat down a bit bonelessly. “Oh, dear. He was such a
nice
man. An accident?”
    “He—uh—committed suicide sometime very early this morning.”
    “Oh, dear. Dreadful. Dreadful!” She got up and fooled with the clasp of her handbag and made a vague about-face, and headed toward the door. “Oh, dear,” she said again, and the screen door hissed and closed after her.
    Joy looked at me across the top of the typewriter. “The girl from the dress shop came over and told me.”
    “Little round girl?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s Nate. Natalia. She’s a Russian.”
    “Oh.”
    “I went out there.”
    “I thought maybe you did.”
    “I can’t quite—take it all in. As though any minute he’ll walk in. A very lusty alive guy.”
    “He—he seemed to be.”
    “I guess he was sick.”
    “I couldn’t understand what he did it with.”
    “One of those things they use to shoot fish underwater.”
    “Like a gun?”
    “More like one of those crossbows, only without the bow part. Surgical rubber instead. In the—uh—throat.”
    “He—did it to himself, then?” she asked. Her mouth worked soundlessly.
    “I can’t see somebody walking up and doing it to him, if that’s what you mean. He had his shoe and sock off so he could work the trigger with his toe.”
    Looking at her as I explained it, I could have sworn that I saw a lot of tension go out of her. She half closed her eyes and seemed to sway a little. I got up quickly and went to her. “You all right?”
    She gave me an almost formal smile. “Yes.