The Instant Enemy Read Free

waited at the doorway for me to come out of the room, then closed and locked the door. The lock was new.
    “Whose idea was the lock?”
    “Actually it was Sandy’s. She wanted more privacy these last few months. More than she could use.”
    She went into another bedroom and shut the door. I found Sebastian back at the kitchen counter drinking coffee. He had washed and shaved and brushed his curly brown hair, put on a tie and a jacket and a more hopeful look.
    “More coffee?”
    “No thanks.” I got out a small black notebook and sat beside him. “Can you give me a description of Davy?”
    “He looked like a young thug to me.”
    “Thugs come in all shapes and sizes. What’s his height, approximately?”
    “About the same as mine. I’m six feet in my shoes.”
    “Weight?”
    “He looks heavy, maybe two hundred.”
    “Athletic build?”
    “I guess you’d say that.” He had a sour competitive note in his voice. “But I could have taken him.”
    “No doubt you could. Describe his face.”
    “He isn’t too bad-looking. But he has that typical sullen look they have.”
    “Before or after you offered to shoot him?”
    Sebastian moved to get up. “Look here, if you’re taking sides against me, what do you think we’re paying you for?”
    “For this,” I said, “and for a lot of other dull interrogations. You think this is my idea of a social good time?”
    “It’s not mine, either.”
    “No, but it belongs to you. What color is his hair?”
    “Blondish.”
    “Does he wear it long?”
    “Short. They probably cut it off in prison.”
    “Blue eyes?”
    “I guess so.”
    “Any facial hair?”
    “No.”
    “What was he wearing?”
    “The standard uniform. Tight pants worn low on the hips, a faded blue shirt, boots.”
    “How did he talk?”
    “With his mouth.” Sebastian’s thin feelings were wearing thinner again.
    “Educated or uneducated? Hip or square?”
    “I didn’t hear him say enough to know. He was mad. We both were.”
    “How would you sum him up?”
    “A slob. A dangerous slob.” He turned in a queer quick movement and looked at me wide-eyed, as if I’d just applied those words to him. “Listen, I have to get down to the office. We’re having an important conference about next year’s program. And then I’m going to have lunch with Mr. Hackett.”
    Before he left, I got him to give me a description of his daughter’s car. It was a last year’s Dart two-door, light green in color, which was registered in his name. He wouldn’t let me put it on the official hot-car list. I wasn’t to tell the police anything about the case.
    “You don’t know how it is in my profession,” he said. “I have to keep up a stainless-steel front. If it slips, I slip. Confidence is our product in the savings and loan industry.”
    He drove away in a new Oldsmobile which, according to his check stubs, was costing him a hundred and twenty dollars a month.

chapter
3
    A FEW MINUTES LATER I opened the front door for Heidi Gensler. She was a clean-looking adolescent whose yellow hair hung straight onto her thin shoulders. She wore no makeup that I could see. She carried a satchel of books.
    Her pale-blue gaze was uncertain. “Are you the man I’m supposed to talk to?”
    I said I was. “My name is Archer. Come in, Miss Gensler.”
    She looked past me into the house. “Is it all right?”
    Mrs. Sebastian emerged from her room wearing a fluffy pink robe. “Come in, Heidi dear, don’t be afraid. It’s nice of you to come.” Her voice was not maternal.
    Heidi stepped inside and lingered in the hallway, ill at ease. “Did something happen to Sandy?”
    “We don’t know, dear. If I tell you the bare facts, I want you to promise one thing: you mustn’t talk about it at school, or at home, either.”
    “I wouldn’t. I never have.”
    “What do you mean by that, dear: ‘You never have’?”
    Heidi bit her lip. “I mean—I don’t mean anything.”
    Mrs. Sebastian moved toward her like a