A Deadly Shade of Gold Read Free Page A

She wrenched her chair sideways and bent forward to put her head between her knees. Charles came rushing over. I told him what I needed. He returned with it in about twelve seconds. I knelt beside her chair and held the smelling salts to her nostrils. Charles hovered. In a few moments she sat up, her color still ghastly.
    She tried to smile and said, "Walk me, Trav. Get me out of here. Please."
    Two
    WE WALKED on the dark grounds of the big hotel, among the walks and landscaping. In exposed places the wind was biting.
    "Feel better?"
    "Terribly maidenly, wasn't it? What did they used to call it? The vapors."
    "I didn't do it very well. I sort of slugged you with it."
    "How did he sound?"
    "Exhausted. He'd been driving a long way."
    "From where?"
    "He didn't say."
    "How did he sound... about me?"
    "As if he's convinced you can never forgive him."
    "Oh God! The fool! The damned fool! All this waste...... " She turned and faced me in the night.
    "Why should he think I couldn't ever understand? After all, a man like that is always terrified of...
    any total commitment. It was cruel and brutal, the way he did it, but I could have...."
    She whirled away and made a forlorn sound, staggered to a slender punk tree, caught it with her Page 8

    left hand, bent forward from the waist and began to vomit. I went to her, put my right hand on her waist to hold her braced and steadied, her hip pulled against the side of my thigh, my left hand clasping her left shoulder. As her slim body leapt and spasmed with the retching, as she made little intermittent demands that I leave her alone, I was remembering just how brutal it was, so all involved with that dreary old business of killing the thing you love the best. Because you are afraid of love, I guess.
    Sam was a random guy, a big restless, reckless lantern-jawed ex-marine, a brawler, a wencher, a two-fisted drinker. He loved the sea and knew it well. He crewed on some deep-water racers. He worked in boat yards. He went into hock for a charter boat, did all right, then had a run of bad luck and lost it. He worked on other charter fishermen, and did some commercial fishing. A boat bum. An ocean bum. For a time he captained a big Wheeler for an adoring widow. He was a type you find around every resort port. Unfocused. A random, rambling man. After you knew him a long time, if he trusted you, you would find out that there was another man underneath, and a lot of the surface was a part he played. He was sensitive, perceptive. He had a liberal arts degree from one of the fine small colleges. He had a lot of ability and no motivation.
    Then he met Nora Gardino, and she was that marvelous catalyst that brought all the energy of Sam Taggart into focus, into some sense of purpose. Nora gave him meaning. And it took a lot of woman to do that. She was more than most, by far.
    At that time I picked up with Nicki and the four of us ran in a small friendly pack. Nicki and I got in on the planning phase. Her shop was doing well. Sam scouted a good piece of waterfront land. He wanted to start a marina from scratch, and he had sound ideas about it, and good local contacts. Once he got it started, they would be married. She would continue with the shop until too pregnant, and then she would sell out and put the money into the marina project. They designed the big airy apartment they would live in, right on the marina property.
    Maybe he felt the walls were closing in. Maybe he felt unworthy of all the total trust and loyalty she was so obviously giving him. Maybe he was afraid that, in spite of all his confidence, he would fail her in some way. By then he was earning pretty good money in a boat yard, and saving every dime of it. She had a dull little girl working for her at the time, plump and pretty with an empty face. Her name was Sandra. Maybe, subconsciously, he wanted it to happen just the way it happened. Maybe, after he got drunk, it was just accidental. But it was cruel, and it was brutal, to have Nora,