“I’m curious,” he said.
She looked up at him at a sharp angle through thick lashes. “About what?”
“You and the Senator. How you managed it.”
“It was voluntary on his part, I assure you. As a matter of fact, he was quite urgent about it. It’s true that he placed himself in a vulnerable position, but I was not compelled to take advantage of it.”
“Maybe that’s lucky for you. Others have tried from an advantage and failed. When he bought off my blonde last year, he showed remarkable skill in the details of the transaction. He knocked her down from ten grand to five and boxed her in so she can’t ever come back for more. Experience, I suspect.”
“Poor girl. Obviously out of her class.” She smiled lazily and tilted Scotch and soda through the smile. “Do you have a cigarette?”
He gave her one and lit it and watched her swallow smoke. She sat there wriggling her toes and alternating Scotch and smoke, and he used the time to empty his own glass. When it was empty, he carried it back to the bar.
“If you’ll excuse me now,” he said. “I think I’ll go upstairs.”
Depositing her glass and crushing her cigarette in a tray, she stood on stocking feet and reached slowly for the ceiling, stretching with a supple twisting of her body.
“Of course. But you haven’t kissed me. Isn’t it proper for a son to kiss his mother? I know so little about such things. I’m afraid you’ll just have to take the initiative until I learn.”
Now there was something in her eyes besides the glitter of malice, a smoky haze that looked as if it might have risen behind them from her cigarette. Her smile was still lazy, but also provocative, and he went over and covered it. At first her lips were very still, yielding to pressure, and then they opened and responded with a soft expulsion of smoked Scotch and a queer little moan, and before it was finished it was such a motherly kiss as even Freud had never dreamed of. After a minute, she broke away and walked across the room to windows covered by heavy green drapes. She parted the drapes with one hand and stood looking out through the cold glass into the sudden winter’s dusk, and he stood and watched her against the glass, and as he watched, a light came on beyond the lawn, and between the light and the glass the snow slanted down in large, wet flakes.
Turning, he walked to the door.
“Peter,” she said.
He stopped and looked back over his shoulder, and she had turned away from the windows, letting the drapes fall together across the glass behind her to shut out the night and the falling snow. Her lips were parted in a little smile that possessed a quality of deadliness, and her eyes were shining.
“About my position in the middle,” she said. “I wouldn’t worry about it, if I were you. I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.”
CHAPTER 2.
The sun was white and hot, just past the zenith. The trees on the lawn stood still in the breathless day. From his room in the east wing of the house, Peter could look down upon the stone terrace that covered part of the ground area between the east wing and the west. From its high place in the sky, the sun shot a sharp angle between the wings. White light rebounded from the colored, glittering flags. Down there on a bright red chaise longue on wheels, Etta lay stretched on her stomach with her head cradled on her arms. She was wearing a pair of white twill shorts that looked from a distance like a small part of Etta that hadn’t been previously exposed to the sun. Her body above and below the brief break was the color of cocoa. On a round wrought-iron table beside the lounge was a tall glass. The glass had parallel red, blue, and yellow stripes painted around its circumference from top to bottom. It was empty.
Carrying a tennis racket, Peter went downstairs. He stopped inside long enough to mix Tom Collinses in glasses to match the one on the table on the terrace and then went out onto the terrace with the racket under his arm and a glass in each hand. Etta didn’t look up. Her body was covered with a thin film of clear oil. The oil gave her skin a soft, shiny look like satin. He set the lull glasses on the table beside the empty, and Etta raised her head slowly and looked at him over a shoulder. Her eyes had a glazed, unfocused look, as if she had wakened from some very deep sleep.
“Hello, darling,” she said.
“I brought you a cold drink. Tom Collins.”
“Thanks. You’re a very thoughtful son.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Is this the boy who called me Mother? What’s the matter, Peter? Feeling sensitive?”
Sitting beside her on the edge of the lounge, he leaned down and touched her lightly with his lips just below the short hair on her neck. A tiny shiver moved through her skin peripherally from the point of contact, and she rolled over and swung her legs off the opposite side.
“I think you’d better hand me my Collins, darling.”
He handed it to her, and she took a swallow and looked at him across the red interval with a little smile twisting her lips.
“Playing tennis?”
“If you’ll play with me.”
“In this heat?”
“You play better when it’s hot.”
“All right. I’ll get my shoes and racket.”
She went inside, carrying her drink. He waited on the lounge and sipped his own. The sunlight bounced and hung shimmering above the flags, and he could feel the heat through the soles of his shoes. He drained his glass, letting the last fragment of ice slip down into his mouth. It melted immediately on his tongue. Time was white and hot and utterly silent, and it did not move. In eternal, unmoving Time only the things moved that were not eternal—the earth and the sun and Etta on the terrace behind him.
“Are there balls at the court?” she said.
“Yes. I left some there yesterday.”
“Okay. I’ll bet you ten on a set.”
“You’re on.”
They went down across the back lawn to the court and began volleying for service, and she won after a couple of minutes, and he knew he was in for a time because her service was very good. She reached high for the ball, rising on her toes and arching back for power, and her racket came up and over in a strong, clean sweep that met the ball at just the right instant of its descent to send it like a bullet over the net at a shallow angle that was mean. The ball skittered off the packed clay with practically no bounce. In all the games they played, he never broke her service.
It was so hot. Sweat kept running down into his eyes to impair his vision, and between the sweat and ascending heat waves, the proximate earth was a blurred distortion. Across the net, Etta’s cocoa body moved and altered and took a thousand shimmering shapes. He could see, even at a distance through the bright haze, how perspiration quickly dampened and darkened her white shorts where they stretched tight over her hips. It was hot as hell, and hell was too hot for tennis. They traded games on services to deuce and then decided to call it quits.
Beside the court was a shed in which were kept a roller and a marker and odds and ends of equipment. They went over and dropped onto the grass in the parallelogram of shade that the shed cast, and Etta lay back with her arms folded up under her head.
“A man could die in heat like this,” he said.
“Die?” Her voice had a soft, crooning quality. “Not you, Peter. Not you and not me. Not for a long, long time. Not until we’ve done all the things I want us to do.”
He looked down at her, and her eyes were wide open and staring up into the sky with shining intensity, as if, by sheer mental effort, she were projecting herself into the hard, blue brilliance. A trickle of perspiration moved slowly downward from the hollow of her throat. He leaned over her, blocking her vision of the sky, and the strangely provocative scent of oil and sweat came up from her into his nostrils.
“I’ve been wondering about something,” she said.
“About what?”
“I’ve been wondering how many men have died because they carried too much insurance.”
“You’d better quit wondering. Lots
of women had wished they had—after it was too late. It’s usually pretty obvious, you know. They hardly ever get away with it.”
“I know. So I’ve been wondering about something else, too. I’ve been wondering how many men have died because their wives carried too much insurance.”
“Is that supposed to make sense?”
“It could. Would you like to hear how? It’s just a hypothetical case, of course. A kind of game.”
“I like games.”
“Well, suppose, for instance, that I had a policy for fifty thousand, double indemnity. Suppose I were to die in an automobile accident. The Senator’s the beneficiary, so he gets paid off. One hundred grand.”
“Very sacrificial of you. Rather wasted, though, I’d say. The Senator doesn’t really need it.”
“Wrong, Peter. He needs it, all right. His affairs aren’t in as good shape as you think they are. That’s why the policy is essential. For you, Peter. Because I’d be dead, naturally, and you’d be sole heir again.”
“Just wait for the old man to die?”
“That might be a long time. By that time, he might have spent the hundred grand or found another heir. On the other hand, a man loses a beautiful young wife that way, it might crack him up. He might commit suicide.”
“And I’d be sole heir. I’d be something else, too. I’d be a natural for the rap. Remember what I said about wives hardly ever getting away with it? That goes for sons, too.”
“You have no imagination, darling. You’re a charmer, and I love you, but you have absolutely no imagination. When the Senator died, you’d be somewhere else, of course. Somewhere with people. There’s nothing like an alibi to keep you clear.”
“Sure. I can see that. So I do it by sticking pins in his image. I do it by black magic.”
“Wrong. You do nothing at all. You know, there’s a certain advantage to being dead, Peter. No one suspects you of anything but being dead.”
Her eyes were slightly averted, staring past him into the brilliant sky. They were lash-shadowed and sleepy and filled with the soft stuff of dreams.
“That’s quite a hypothetical case,” he said. “You must have spent a lot of time on it.”
She smiled faintly at the sky. “I like to dream. It amuses me.”
“Has it amused you to locate a body to leave for yours when you die in this accident?”
“That should be no problem. In the right kind of accident, almost any body would do. I’d only need a dentist.”
“A dentist?”
“Yes. Because of teeth, you see. That’s the way they identify bodies that can’t be recognized.”
“He’d have to be an accessory. How do you go about picking up a dentist to act as accessory to murder? Just canvass the prospects? Insert an ad in the help-wanted column, maybe?”
“He’d have to be picked carefully. It would take time, because he’d have to be developed. Persuaded.”
“I can imagine the persuasion, and I don’t like it.”
“Don’t be childish, darling.”
“What about afterward? Just send him about his business? Just say thanks and good-by?”
“Something like that. With reasonable compensation for his services, of course. An accessory to murder doesn’t make trouble, darling. He can’t afford to.”
He leaned back and stared off down the slope of earth beyond the tennis court to where it dropped away above the river. The drop was almost perpendicular, and the river was hidden at the foot of the bluff, but he could see on the other side the wide fields of the bottoms stretching eastward to a chain of low hills. The fields and the foliage on the hills looked parched and faded in the hot, white light.
He was thinking of the suburban road that ran in front of the house. He was remembering that the road and the bluff converged downstream. The road came downgrade to the bluff and turned sharply to parallel it for a short distance. An inadequate rail fence had been erected along the bluff, but a car coming down the grade and failing to make the sharp turn would surely crash right through.
It was a good place for a bad accident, he thought.
CHAPTER 3.
The street door of the bar closed behind him with a whisper. He stood in beige pile, his pupils adjusting to shadows, and listened to the sounds of brittle glass in contact, the rise and fall of small talk over cocktails, a subdued blue voice against a background of strings. Then he saw Etta looking at him from a booth across the room. She lifted her glass by its slender stem in a brief salute, and he went over and sat down in the booth across from her.
“You’re late, darling,” she said.
“Sorry. I’ve been having my teeth cleaned.”
She had lifted her glass to drink again, but the action was suspended suddenly with the edge of crystal just touching her lips. Her breath stirred slightly the gin and vermouth, and her eyes, wide and still and black in the contrived dusk, stared at him across the golden surface. After a moment, with an odd little sigh, she tipped the glass and set it down again.
“Poor dear. It’s always such an ordeal going to the dentist. You’d better have a drink at once.”
“I could use one, all right.”
He signaled a waiter and asked for bourbon and water. When it arrived, he drank half of it quickly and sat looking down into the remainder, turning the glass with fingertips around suspended cubes.
“I’ve been looking for a good dentist myself,” she said. “Would you recommend yours?”
“I think he’d do. I’m very particular about dentists, and I had this one investigated thoroughly.”
“What’s his name?”
“Foresman. Norton Foresman. He’s in the Clinical Center Building.”
“Perhaps I should arrange an appointment with him.”
“It might be a good idea. I’m sure he’d appreciate it. He needs the money.”
“Yes? I thought dentists were generally prosperous.”
“Oh, his income’s good enough, but his expenditures are out of proportion. Unfortunately, he has expensive tastes.”
“Such as?”
“Such as women and horses and the Riverview Casino.”
“Has he been losing?”
“He and the horses. The women and the casino are way ahead. You know Jeb Shannon? He owns Riverview, and he’s holding a bundle of Foresman’s paper. About eight grand’s worth. I’ve dropped some to Shannon myself, and I know how he operates. He’s a tough guy with connections, and he doesn’t like to wait too long. With Foresman, it’s getting to be almost too long.”
“I see. It means the doctor would probably be susceptible.” She drained her glass and sat smiling quietly at the exposed olive. “What does he look like, Peter? Tell me some more about Dr. Norton Foresman.”
“He’s tall. About two inches taller than me. He’s vain and arrogant, and I have a feeling that he could be dangerous. Ladies’ man, as I said. Wavy blond hair and rather florid complexion. He has good shoulders, and he carries himself as if he might have done some amateur boxing, but he’d run to fat if he ever let himself go. Handsome, if you like the type. Too handsome, maybe. Maybe handsome enough to make persuasion fun.”
Moving her smile from the olive to him, she reached past her glass and his and touched his hand with long fingers, and under the table below the intimacy of fingers, he was aware of the simultaneous intimacy of knees. He felt again, as he had felt a thousand times, the dark hunger for her that was often fed but never satisfied, and he knew, as he had known from the first, that there was nothing at all that she wouldn’t do for whatever she wanted, but he knew also that he would never care so long as one of the things she wanted was Peter Roche.
“Don’t worry, Peter,” she said. “Don’t worry for a minute. Persuasion may be fun for Dr. Foresman, but not for me, because the only fun for me is you, and anyhow it can’t be helped. Tell me, darling, how much do you think he’d charge to look at my molars?”
“Offhand,” he said, “I’d guess about ten thousand dol
lars.”
CHAPTER 4.
Same bar, same booth, but the year in a quarter turn had changed its season. The sun had lost is warmth and was a pale wash in the street outside, cut by a chill wind.
Peter sat over a bourbon and watched the door. A bright scrap of paper danced across the concrete walk and was trapped for an instant against glass.
A man opened the door and went out.
Another man opened the door and came in.
A man and a woman came in together.
The woman was dressed in a navy blue suit and wore a silver fox around her shoulders. She had short mahogany hair under a chip of a blue hat with a tiny red feather on it, and she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and very shortly she would order a very dry martini. The man was tall and blond in expensive tweed, and there was arrogance in the carriage of his head and elastic in his walk. He looked like he would order Scotch.
He did. Peter could see it all from his position. He gave the martini and the Scotch time to diminish by half, and then he went over to the table where the man and the beautiful woman sat.
“Hello, Etta,” he said.
She looked up and smiled and said, “Oh, hello, Peter,” and Dr. Norton Foresman stood up politely and permitted his face to express a nominal amount of interest when Etta introduced them.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “The stepson.”
Peter nodded. “It’s very funny, isn’t it? My being Etta’s stepson, I mean. People always get a laugh out of it.”
“I’d say that it’s more fortunate than funny. For you, that is. Will you sit down and have a drink with us?”
Peter smiled and thought, If you only knew how fortunate it is for me you Goddamn molar mechanic. If you only knew!
He said, “No, thanks. I just had one. See you at home, Etta.”
He went out into the sun that had no warmth and turned down the street two blocks to the slot where he’d left his car. Behind the wheel, he lit a cigarette and looked at his watch. Five-thirty, she’d said. It was five now. He finished the cigarette and lit another from the butt and was acutely conscious of the drag of time.
The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack Page 13