Free Deadly Weapon by Wade Miller Page B

left the bar as we got in the elevator and he was on the next one coming down — ”
    Kevin squeezed his upper arm hard in exasperation. “Walter! Who?”
    “Oh,” he said, his eyes coming back to focus on her impatient face. “I’m sorry. It was our evasive friend from the Grand Theater.” He took her elbow and urged her toward the revolving door. “The popcorn vendor. The boy who tried to sneak out of the theater, you know. John Brownlee.”

9
. Sunday, September 24, 11:25 P.M.
    T HE B UICK bore them quietly out the Eleventh Avenue gorge under the Cabrillo Bridge. Mixed eucalypti and evergreen rose shadowy on the canyon slopes of Balboa Park. Behind them the plate glass of the Sky Room showed as a red rectangle high in the sky. The fog was still a shy wispy thing that disappeared at the headlights’ stab.
    “Light up and tell me about your father and Shasta Lynn,” prompted Walter James. “But first: are you sure?”
    Kevin fumbled at the cigarettes. “Oh, I don’t know! I’m not sure of anything any more. But I can’t see what else it could be.”
    She set two cigarettes aglow and handed him one. “You see, Dad never goes out at night very much — never oftener than one night a week generally. He likes to sit by the radio all evening until he falls asleep. He’s crazy about radio programs no matter what they are. He even has a radio going all day in his office, listening to the music over XEGC and those announcers with the horrible voices.”
    Walter James looked puzzled.
    “That’s a Mexican station down in Tijuana. And, of course, the announcers are Mexican and all have flat raspy voices.”
    “Does Shasta Lynn have a radio that particularly excites your father?”
    “Please don’t be funny,” said Kevin, unhappily. “The radio has nothing to do with it. I was just trying to show you Dad doesn’t lead a particularly wild life. But for the last few years he’s been going out one night a week regularly — but not necessarily the same night every week. I never thought anything about it — I don’t even remember whether he told me where he was going or not. I just figured it was some real estate business and didn’t pay any attention. But one night about a month ago he told me he was going to a Chamber of Commerce meeting and the next day one of my professors was talking about the Chamber of Commerce and happened to mention their meetings were on an entirely different night.” Her voice raced ahead as though she were anxious to get everything said. “The next week he said he was going down to the Bowling Academy and mentioned something about getting interested in the game and needing the exercise. I went downtown and sat in the Academy all evening. Dad never showed up.”
    “Hell, a man has a right to change his mind,” said Walter James amiably.
    “But for the last three weeks he’s used the Bowling Academy excuse and he never goes there.”
    “But, Kevin — have you ever followed him to a woman?”
    “No,” she said. “I’ve been ashamed of what I’ve done already.”
    Walter James said carefully, “Please don’t be offended by this, Kevin — but isn’t it his own business?”
    She spoke as if she had asked and answered the question many times to herself. “You mean that I’m old enough to know what life is all about?”
    “Something like that.”
    “Walter, I’m not trying to pry into Dad’s life. We’ve never been awfully close. I’ve got too much imagination for him. But we always have been on the level with each other and — and — I don’t want to see him get mixed up with the wrong people. People like Shasta Lynn.”
    “Just how does Shasta Lynn fit into this?”
    She rolled down the window and tossed her cigarette out. The inrush of air rippled her coppery hair. She leaned her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes wearily.
    “This is where I really seem silly,” she admitted. “I got some crazy idea that he was in financial trouble. I