Death Of A Dude Read Free

Iowa go first through the revolving door of the world’s largest department store. If you ask how I knew who they were, I didn’t, but that’s what they looked like. But for anyone who is fed up with people and noise, the favourite spot could be Lily Rowan’s cabin clearing. I admit there is a little noise, Berry Creek making a fuss about the rocks that won’t move, but after a couple of days you hear it only when you want to. The big firs start farther up, but there are plenty of trees right there, mostly lodgepole pine, and downstream is Beaver Meadow; and just upstream, where the creek swings around again to the north, is a cliff of solid rock you can’t see the top of from this side of the creek. If you need exercise and want to throw stones at gophers it’s only a three-minute walk down the lane to the road.
    The cabin is logs of course, and is all on one level. Crossing a stone-paved terrace with a roof, you enter a room 34 by 52, with a 10-foot fireplace at the rear, and for living that’s it. For privacy or sleeping, there are two doors at the right, one to Lily’s room and the other to a guest room. A door at the left leads to a long hall, and when you take it, first comes a big kitchen, then Mimi’s room, then a big storeroom, and then three guest rooms. There are six baths, complete with tubs and showers. A very nice little cabin. Except for the beds, the furniture you sit on is nearly all wicker. The rugs in all rooms are Red Indian, and on the walls, instead of pictures, are Indian blankets and rugs. Three of them in the big room are genuine bayetas. There is just one picture on view anywhere, a framed photograph of Lily’s father and mother on the piano-one of the few things she carts back and forth from New York.
    Some of the items Lily had got at Timberburg that morning were for the kitchen and storeroom, and with them we saved steps by skirting the terrace to a door direct to the hall. There was no offer of help from the dark-eyed beauty with a pointed chin who was on a chair in the sun off the edge of the terrace. Since her halter and shorts didn’t total more than three square feet, there was a lot of smooth tan skin showing, with her bare legs out straight to the foot extension. She had greeted us with a graceful wave as we got out of the car. Back from the deliveries to the kitchen and storeroom, Lily took the few things that were left, and I backed the car into a space among the lodgepoles and got my paper bag. Lily had stopped by Diana’s chair to give her one of the packages.
    Her name was Diana Kadany. A house guest at Lily’s cabin might be anyone from a tired-out social worker to a famous composer of the kind of music I can get along without. That year there were three, counting me, which was par. Discussing Diana Kadany one day when we were up at the second pool getting trout for supper, I had guessed she was twenty-two and Lily had guessed twenty-five. She had made a sort of a hit the previous winter in an off-Broadway play entitled Not Me You Don’t, the kind of play that would go fine with music by that famous composer I mentioned, and she had been invited to Montana only because Lily, having helped stake the play, was curious about her. Of course that was risky, taking on a question mark for a month, but it hadn’t been too bad. It was only a minor nuisance that she practiced being seductive with any male who happened to be handy. Of course Wade Worthy and I were the handiest.
    As I crossed the big room to the door to my room, the one at the far right, Wade Worthy was at the table in the corner, banging away on the Underwood. He was the other guest, but a special kind of guest. He was doing a job. For two years Lily had collected material about her father, and when there was about half a ton of it she had started looking for someone to write the book, thinking that with the help of a friend of hers who was an editor at the Parthenon Press it might take a week. It had taken nearly