Death in a Family Way Read Free

1687 West Broadway, Suite 301. Do you know the area? It’s between Fir and Pine. It’ll take you about twenty minutes or so by bus.”
    â€œYes,” Margaret answered slowly. I know the district quite well. Whom do I ask for?”
    â€œThe name’s Nat. Nat Southby. It’s on the door.”
    â€œAll right, Mr. Southby. I’ll see you at two, then.” She replaced the receiver and sat down with a thump on the chair next to the telephone table, a dazed look on her face.
    I didn’t ask any of the right questions . . . What kind of business is he in? What salary does it pay? It’s absolutely out of the question . . . what will Harry say? I should call him back and say I can’t make it.
But instead, Margaret went to the hall mirror and looked herself up and down. And, without fully realizing it, she took the first timid step toward changing her life.

CHAPTER TWO
    It was close to lunchtime and Broadway was thick with people, buses and parked cars. Margaret soon gave up the attempt to find a parking spot for her small red Morris Minor on the main drag, and instead turned off onto Fir, where, even though the traffic was lighter, she was still lucky to find a place just being vacated.
    Most of the buildings in the 1600-block were two and three storeys high, with offices and garment factories on the upper floors and shops at street level. The business of selling spilled out onto the sidewalk: right next door to a second-hand shop where old books and magazines were displayed on a rickety table was a small Italian bakery, and next to that a Chinese grocery with pails of cut flowers, boxes of vegetables and potted plants. As Margaret joined the lunchtime strollers, the smell of freshly baked bread mingled with the rich aroma of ground coffee and made her realize that in her nervousness to be punctual, she’d forgotten to eat lunch.
    Halfway down the block, she found number 1687 easily enough and saw that although the brick building was old, it was not quite as rundown as the neighbours that hemmed it in on either side. A photo shop occupied the ground floor, but next to it stood a glass door leading into a kind of small lobby area.
    Resolutely, she pushed it open. Immediately in front of her was a narrow staircase, and beside it an old elevator waited for passengers, its sliding steel gate open, all lights off. One look at the elevator convinced her to choose the stairs, but by the time she had climbed the three flights, she wished that she had accepted the dingy elevator’s invitation. Puffing with exertion, she walked along the dimly lit corridor to number 301. “Southby’s Investigations,” she read on the grimy sign. “Please Walk In.”
    The room she entered overlooked Broadway. She just had time to notice a wooden desk with a Remington typewriter on it, and next to it two battered green filing cabinets, their open drawers spilling out buff folders bulging with photographs and papers, before a man’s voice called, “Come in.”
    Looking around, she realized that the voice was coming from a partly open connecting door. As she pushed gently on it, clouds of cigar smoke wafted out over her head, forming eddies and swirls before slipping through an air vent in the ceiling of the outer office.
    Hesitantly poking her head around the door, she saw a rather untidy man sitting behind a desk piled high with more buff folders and papers. He stood up as she entered, immediately tried to hitch up his sagging pants, stubbed a half-smoked cigar into an overflowing ashtray and, with a nod, indicated a chair.
    â€œSit down, Mrs. . . . uh . . .” He rummaged through the mess on his desk and finally came up with a scrap of paper. “Ah, yes, Mrs. Spencer, isn’t it?”
    Margaret nodded, at a loss for words.
    He brushed cigar ash off his already stained jacket and sat down. For a moment, he just looked at her. The blue of her smart Chanel wool suit matched