Read The Ivory Grin for Free Online Page B

is still in school doing real good writting this for me (hi sis). Hope you can raze fair stay off the roads
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    M OTHER .
    P.S.—
How are you sis am fine, you know who
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    I put the letter back where I had found it, and closed the suitcase. Its catch clicked loudly, like a final tick of time.
    Lucy’s purse lay in a nest of dust in the corner behind her head. It contained lipstick and a handkerchief stained with it, a few ten- and five- and one-dollar bills and some change, a one-way ticket to Detroit, a social security card, and a newspaper clipping. The clipping was printed in old-fashioned type under a single-column head:
    MOTHER OFFERS REWARD FOR MISSING MAN
    Arroyo Beach, Sept. 8 (Special to the BELLA CITY PRESS.) Mrs. Charles A. Singleton, socialite resident of this resort town, today posted a reward of $5,000 for information concerning the whereabouts of her son. The son, Charles A. Singleton, Jr., disappeared from the public rooms of a local hotel one week ago, on the evening of September 1st. His friends and relatives have not heard from him since that date.
    Singleton, a Harvard graduate and wartime Air ForceLieutenant, is of medium height and athletic build, with curly brown hair, hazel eyes and a ruddy complexion. When last seen he was wearing a grey worsted suit, white shirt, dark red tie, and black shoes, without hat or topcoat. The missing man, son of the late Major Charles A. Singleton, is heir to the Singleton agricultural enterprises. His maternal grandfather was Colonel Isaac Carlyle, who married Maria Valdes, daughter of the founder of the great Valdes land-grant estates.
    Local police are inclined to reject suggestions of foul play, though Mrs. Singleton herself expresses fears for her son’s safety. County Sheriff Oscar Lanson states: “Kidnapping seems out of the question. There has been no ransom note, for one thing. As for foul play, the evidence indicates that Mr. Singleton left Arroyo Beach under his own power, for his own reasons. It is to be remembered that he is a young, unattached man, with a background of travel. We are, however, doing everything we can to locate him, and will welcome any information from the public.”
    Anyone having information as to Singleton’s whereabouts was urged to contact Capt. Kennedy of the Arroyo Beach sheriff’s office.
    I read the report twice, fixing the names, times, places, in my head, then replaced the clipping in the purse and the purse in the corner. In a way I knew less than before, as something written in a foreign language extends the range of your ignorance. I looked at my watch. Five twenty-four. Seven minutes since I had found Lucy.
    In order to reach the door I had to step over her again. I looked down into the gray face before I switched off the light. Alienated and deeply sunk beyond time already, the face told me nothing. Then it was swallowed by shadows.
    In the court, the yellow sunlight looked thin and faded, as if it had been late afternoon for an insupportable time. An old car turned in from the highway and rolled across thegravel to the trailers, leaving a feeble flurry of dust on the stagnant air. I waited for the dust to settle before I started across the court to the office. Before I reached it I saw that Alex Norris was watching me from the gate.
    Moving with awkward speed in a pressed blue suit too small for him, he ran at me. I went to meet him and crouched for the onset. He was heavy and strong, and he knew how to use his weight. His shoulder took my midriff and laid me on the gravel on my back. I got up. He didn’t know how to use his fists. I stepped inside a wild swing and bent him with a body-blow. It brought his head forward for an uppercut. Instead, to save my knuckles and his face, I locked his right arm and used it as a lever to turn him away.
    “Let me go,” he said. “Fight fair. I’ll show you.”
    “You showed me. I’m too old to fight. Me and Joe.”
    “He could beat your brains out,” the boy cried defiantly.