Free The Goodbye Look by Ross MacDonald

have some company with his food. I only prepared enough for the two of us, but I’ll be glad to pour you a cup of tea.”
    “I could use a cup of tea, Mrs. Shepherd.”
    I followed her into the house. The entrance hall was impressive if you didn’t look too closely. But the parquetry floor was buckling and loose underfoot, and the walls were dark with mold.
    The dining room was more cheerful. Under a yellowing crystal chandelier with one live bulb, a table had been set for one person, with polished silver on a clean white cloth. An old white-headed man in a rusty dinner coat was finishing off what looked like a bowl of beef stew.
    The woman introduced me to him. He put his spoon down and struggled to his feet, offering me a gnarled hand. “Take iteasy with my arthritis, please. Sit down. Mrs. Shepherd will get you a cup of coffee.”
    “Tea,” she corrected him. “We’re out of coffee.” But she lingered in the room, waiting to hear what was said.
    Rawlinson’s eyes had a mica glint. He spoke with impatient directness. “This revolver you telephoned about—I gather it’s been used for some illegal purpose?”
    “Possibly. I don’t know that it has.”
    “But if it hasn’t you’ve come a long way for nothing.”
    “In my job everything has to be checked out.”
    “I understand you’re a private detective,” he said.
    “That’s correct.”
    “Employed by whom?”
    “A lawyer named Truttwell in Pacific Point.”
    “John Truttwell?”
    “Yes. Do you know him?”
    “I met John two or three times through one of his clients. That was a long time ago, when he was young and I was middle-aged. It must be close to thirty years—Estelle’s been dead for nearly twenty-four.”
    “Estelle?”
    “Estelle Chalmers—Judge Chalmers’s widow. She was a hell of a woman.” The old man smacked his lips like a wine-taster.
    The woman still lingering by the door was showing signs of distress. “All that is ancient history, Mr. Rawlinson. The gentleman isn’t interested in ancient history.”
    Rawlinson laughed. “It’s the only kind of history I know. Where’s that tea you were so freely offering, Mrs. Shepherd?” She went out, closing the door with emphasis. He turned to me. “She thinks she owns me. She doesn’t, though. If I don’t have a right to my memories, there isn’t a great deal left at my time of life.”
    “I’m interested in your memories,” I said, “specifically inthe Colt revolver you bought in September 1941. It was probably used to shoot a man last night.”
    “What man?”
    “Sidney Harrow was his name.”
    “I never heard of him,” Rawlinson said, as if this cast some doubt on Harrow’s reality. “Is he dead?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you’re trying to connect my gun with his death?”
    “Not exactly. It either is connected or it isn’t. I want to know which.”
    “Wouldn’t ballistics show?”
    “Possibly. The tests haven’t been made yet.”
    “Then I think I should wait, don’t you?”
    “You certainly should if you’re guilty, Mr. Rawlinson.”
    He laughed so hard his upper teeth slipped. He pushed them back into place with thumb and forefinger. Mrs. Shepherd appeared in the doorway with a tea tray.
    “What’s so funny?” she asked him.
    “You wouldn’t consider it funny, Mrs. Shepherd. Your sense of humor is deficient.”
    “Your sense of fittingness is. For an eighty-year-old man who used to be the president of a bank—” She set the tea tray down with a slight clash that completed her thought. “Milk or lemon, Mr. Archer?”
    “I’ll take it black.”
    She poured our tea in two bone china cups that didn’t match. The rundown elegance of the household made me wonder if Rawlinson was a poor man or a miser; and what in hell had happened to his bank.
    “Mr. Archer suspects me of committing a murder,” he said to the woman in a slightly bragging tone.
    She didn’t think it was funny at all. Her dark face got darker, grim around the mouth and in the