You Live Once

by John D. MacDonald

  “I guess you’re darn good for me,” she said. “Like a sort of substitute conscience. I wish it was you I was in love with. It would be so much easier. And better.”

  “You’re special, Nancy.”

  “Somebody has to think so. I guess we better get back now.”

  We climbed the steps. I was certain Mrs. Raymond checked me over quickly for signs of lipstick. Nancy had dabbed it off with a Kleenex. I said goodby as soon as I could and left.

  I did not like driving by the entrance to the road where I had left Mary’s body. Soon the night would come with small animals rustling through the shrubbery, with dew weighting the white skirt, misting the bare shoulders. There would be insect song and a riding moon. I wished I could have left her in a warm dry place. It couldn’t matter to her, I knew, but it mattered to me. It didn’t seem right.

  I ate in town and it was dark when I turned into my drive. Mrs. Speers ran a window up and called to me. I braked the car, motor running.

  “Has Mary Olan turned up yet, Mr. Sewell?” she asked.

  “Not yet, Mrs. Speers.”

  “They must be getting very worried by now.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You won’t forget my trash tomorrow, will you?”

  “I’ll remember it, Mrs. Speers.”

  “I guess you’ll be going to bed right now, won’t you?”

  “How do you mean?”

  She laughed. “Well, you know I heard you drive in at four, this morning.”

  “I was in by two, Mrs. Speers.”

  She laughed again. “You young folks, you lose track of time.”

  “I know it wasn’t that late.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. Sewell.” She closed the window.

  Inside my apartment, I locked the door, turned on the lights, closed the blinds. It was good to be alone and in a locked place. I felt as though I would now be able to think clearly and consecutively. All day I had been playing a part. It had left no room for reflection. I felt as though my face ached from smiling. I had walked among the beach people, shaking hands with a hand that had carried the dead. It gave me an appreciation of that degree of iron control a murderer must have.

  During the day I had learned two new facts: Dodd Raymond had been out of his house until five, and a car had driven into my driveway at four. I had no doubt but that the car at four had brought Mary to the place of her death. Probably Mrs. Speers, sleeping through my first arrival, hearing the arrival at four, turned over and went to sleep again and did not hear the car leave.

  I had to think of Dodd as the suspect. I knew that he and Mary Olan had been having an affair. And I knew that Mary was cruel, taunting, ruthless—withholding herself on whim. I could imagine Dodd, infuriated beyond reason, striking her in anger, killing her. Maybe she had showed him the key I had given her, hinting at a reason for it which did not exist. Yes, he could have killed in sudden jealous anger. And, having killed in that way, knowing that I was a very sound sleeper, knowing the key was available, he would be capable of planting the body in my apartment. It would not be done out of malice toward me—though there would be some of that. It would be done as the most logical way of diverting suspicion.

  Thus, had Mary died of a blow, or died with the mark of the strangler’s hands on her throat, I would have had no doubt that it was Dodd. But the cause of death had been my red belt around her throat; the print of the weave had been in her flesh. And so she had been brought to my apartment to be killed there. And I could not see Dodd, ambitious and intelligent, premeditating something that could so easily have gone wrong. Had I constituted a serious threat to his career, it might be plausible. On the other hand ambition was a disease that could distort facts. Maybe he believed I was a threat to his career.

  His worry about Mary had seemed genuine. Yet what Ray and Tory had told me seemed to indicate he was a good actor. Of course the affair itself had been a potential threat to his career. But ambitious men have been blinded by flesh before.

  Like so many guessing games, this one came to a dead end. He could have, and he couldn’t have. I could carry it right up to the final moment, and then my mind rebelled at the picture of Dodd bringing her into the apartment, selecting the belt, drawing the makeshift noose tightly around her throat.

  When I took my pajamas from the closet, a drifting memory of her musky perfume remained there. I went to bed emotionally exhausted. In the faint light that came into the room I could see the open closet door, and I could imagine she was still there.

  I slept and dreamed. I dreamed we all sat around a coffin. Mary sat up in the coffin, naked, the belt around her neck. Everyone looked at me. I explained that it was just a muscle reflex that made her sit up. She got out of the coffin and came to me. We danced. All the others kept time with a slow sad clapping of their hands, watching us as we danced. I kept whispering to Mary that she should get back into the coffin.

  I looked down at her bare breast as we danced. Above the nipple was marked C.P.P. It was not tattooed, it was in black, in raised, shiny ornate letters, like the engraving on an expensive calling card. She said Dodd had done it, and the hideous mouth grinned. I said she had to get back into the coffin. She danced me to the coffin and I looked into it and saw why she could not. Nancy Raymond lay in the coffin, naked, her body gilded. On her body crouched a monstrous hairy spider with iridescent eyes. I awoke in cold sweating childhood terror and knew I had cried out because the echo of my cry seemed to be in the room. It was a long time before I slept again.

  At eight-twenty-five the next morning, a grey gusty Monday, I parked with my front bumper under the little white sign that said MR. SEWELL. With such small conveniences are the souls of executives purchased. My office, along with the space assigned to Engineering and to Research, is on what you could call a mezzanine looking out over the main production floor. My secretary is in the room with me, along with filing cases for blueprints, a pair of drafting tables, my desk, sundry straight chairs. The office wall nearest the production area is duo-therm glass from waist-height up. Beyond that wall is a railed catwalk that extends the length of the building, with a circular iron staircase at either end.

  To get a piece of work out you need men, machines and materials at the right place at the right time. To facilitate this I have four production chasers, a production record clerk. I keep a beady eye on inventory, on quotas, on equipment maintenance, on absenteeism. With the system we have, it should run like watches. But it never does. If it isn’t an industrial accident, then it’s some storeroom monkey counting an empty box as being a hundred available items necessary for assembly. Next some setup man blunders and an automatic milling machine works busily all day turning out scrap. When things start to roll, a cancellation and change order comes in from on high. Then maintenance fumbles and we tear the gearing out of a turret lathe. You get behind and try to jolly the boys into doing a little back busting to catch up and the union steward comes around talking darkly about speedups. Then I have to go down on the floor with my time and motion study man and quack with the steward.

  Half the time it is like working in a madhouse, and the rest of the time you are merely a one-armed juggler. I love it. There is always more than just keeping the thing running. Right now, coordinating with Engineering, I was in the middle of changing one of the lines, unbolting equipment, jackhammering places for new equipment, resetting conveyor lines. Sales, in New York, was hollering. I knew that once the new line was set and checked out, we’d have to go on two-shift operation.

  I like to get there early. I like to stand out on the catwalk and look down for a few minutes at the silent waiting equipment. Its arrangement is an exercise in logic. All the beds and housings and turrets are cold grey, and all the moving parts are bright Chinese red. It is a good place to work. It is clean, air conditioned, well lighted. Labor relations are pretty good. C.P.P. is very mildly paternalistic, but not so much that the guy on the machine wishes they’d knock off the expensive fluff and put the difference i
n his envelope.

  I took my morning look at the floor and then went into the small office next to mine where my records clerk works. I studied the big score board, made a mental note of the weak spots and went into my own office. It is air conditioned and sound-proofed, but with the door shut once the day gets going, the rumble of the floor can make you feel as though you’re on an ocean liner. People go in and out my door all day long. Every time the door is opened the blast of pure noise, metal-cutting noise, is monstrous.

  I had picked up a morning paper on the way to work, but I hadn’t had a chance to do more than glance at a fat black headline—OLAN HEIRESS MISSING. I had expected newspaper coverage, but not so much. This went all the way across the top of page one, dwarfing a second headline about a Paris conference. I hadn’t known Mary Olan was quite that important.

  I spread the paper out on my desk to read the account. Warren has two papers, the morning Ledger-Tribune and the evening Ledger-Record, both owned by the same firm. Except on Monday, the morning paper is usually a warmed over version of the evening paper. They are excessively dull papers, full of editorial caution, unwilling to offend any local group. No particularly controversial syndicate columnist is ever used.

  The subhead said, CAR FOUND ABANDONED NEAR HIGHLAND.

  Mary Olan, twenty-six-year-old niece of Mr. and Mrs. Willis Pryor of this city, and heiress to the Rolph Olan estate, has been missing since late Saturday evening, and police state today that no trace of her has been found. A late model black convertible found yesterday near an abandoned farm south of Highlands was identified as belonging to the missing woman. A search of the surrounding area has been organized.

  Miss Olan left the Pryor home on Saturday at noon, alone. She lunched at the Locust Ridge Club and, during the afternoon, played golf with Miss Neale Bettiger. She had taken other clothing to the club with her, and she dressed there and met friends for dinner and a club dance. She left the club after midnight, with the stated intention of returning to her home. It has been reported that Miss Olan did not seem disturbed or emotionally upset in any way.

  Police have not ruled out the possibility of kidnaping, and a close watch is being kept on the Pryor home. They found no evidence of foul play in Miss Olan’s automobile. She was last seen wearing a white skirt, a dark grey sleeveless blouse and high-heeled dark grey shoes. She is five feet four, brunette and weighs approximately a hundred and twenty pounds. Her eyes are grey.

  Miss Olan is the granddaughter of Thomas Burke Olan who founded the Warren Citizens Bank and Trust Company, and Olan Tool and Die, which is now the Federated Tool Company, Inc.

  Miss Olan was born in this city at the old Olan home on Prospect Street, now headquarters of the Heart of America Historical Association, which was given the property under the terms of Mr. Rolph Olan’s will. Miss Olan was educated in private schools here and abroad, and has made her home here for the past four years.

  It was typical tippy-toe Warren coverage. No mention of the family killing. No mention of Mary’s abortive marriage and annulment. No hint of her mother’s incurable illness. They’d even had her going home from the club at a more reasonable hour. I was glad that the police had apparently kept the name of her dinner dance companion to themselves. Otherwise I would have had a reporter or two hanging around. Or maybe not; perhaps the Warren papers thought there was something unclean about going out and tracking down the principals in a disappearance of this kind.

  I knew where Highland was. It was a small rural community about fifteen miles from town. Mary had driven me out through there to the Pryor farm one day to show me a horse. The horse had rolled his eyes, laid his ears back and tried to make a meal off my arm. She had said he was “spirited.” I watched from a safe place while John Fidd saddled the horse and Mary took him out and ran him. He was foaming and wilted when she brought him back. Fidd took him and started walking him around. She showed me most of the farm and then we went back to town, with Mary smelling faintly of horse.

  The paper had run a cut of Mary. It saddened me to look at it. It had been taken some years ago, before life had put that look of mockery and hardness in her eyes. She looked very young, very earnest.

  My girl came in at quarter to nine. Her name is Antonia MacRae. She is a slim pleasant morsel, and satisfyingly bright. She decorates and implements an office adequately. Italian and Scots combine to make an intriguing woman. Her mother gave her her coloring, her suggestively rounded figure with its promise of languor and lazy Sundays in bed. But from Papa she inherited a cool, canny eye, a lot of skepticism, and a brain that goes click like an I.B.M. machine.

  She came in wearing a blue jumper over a white blouse. With her crow-wing hair and white white teeth, the effect was good. The beltless waist of the jumper was so beautifully fitted to her figure that, had I not had Mary on my mind, it would have been distracting.

  It makes for a peculiar relationship to share an office with a girl who is lovely and desirable, as well as efficient. When work piled up I could forget everything except her quickness and her loyalty. It was during the lulls that I would become aware of other things. As when she would sit on her heels and dig for something in the bottom drawer of a file cabinet, and I would find myself staring at the way her waist would curve richly into the fullness of hips. Or she would bring something to me at my desk and, out of the corner of my eye, I would see the impertinence of breast under a sheen of office blouse, a bare six inches away. Or I would be standing over her, dictating to her, and, while hunting for the right phrase, realize I was bobbing my head around like a fool trying to find a vantage point from where I could look down the front of her dress.

  Toni MacRae was quite aware of my interest, my speculative admiring interest. It caused her to change certain postures rather quickly. It often caused a very delicate blush. I had made a pass the second week she was in my office. It had been repulsed with unmistakable firmness, and no anger. She made it clear for the record. Another type of girl in those same circumstances, quite aware of her figure and of the boss’s interest in it, might have done a certain amount of flaunting and posturing. Not Toni. She couldn’t very well wear a Mother Hubbard, but she dressed and carried herself so as to minimize office tension.

  “Good morning,” she said, putting her purse in her desk drawer.

  “Morning. I’m reading about Mary.”

  “You were one of the friends she had dinner with, weren’t you? I heard you talking to Mr. Raymond about it Friday.”

  “I was one of the ones, yes.”

  “Funny thing,” she said, frowning thoughtfully. She leaned back in her little secretarial chair. Her desk is cattycorner near the outside windows, facing mine. She laced her fingers across the nape of her neck, elbows out, frowning as she thought about Mary’s disappearance. I must have stared at the front of the jumper with horrid intensity. She straightened up, lowering her arms hastily, bringing her typing machine up out of the bowels of the desk with one practiced muscular wrench.

  I could sense the plant filling up. I could hear the faraway ding-ding-ding of the I.B.M. time clock as they filed in. A few pieces of equipment started and then, on the stroke of nine the place came to full life for the long Monday. Hangover day. Absentee day. Gus Kruslov was my first customer. He waddled in and said, “I ain’t got me a single damn man to put on that number three mill.”

  “You’ll have to take King off setup then.”

  “He’ll raise hell.”

  “Put him on. Lean on him. I’ll stop by later and sweet-talk him.”

  As soon as he was gone, Ratcher came in with one of his kid engineers who had dreamed up a cutie over the weekend. We spread the drawing out on the table and went over it, and it looked fine. The kid was beaming. Toni had gotten the summary report from the records clerk and she was making a stencil, so I went down on the floor with the engineers.

  It was that kind of a day. A jumping bean day. Dodd Raymond came up to my office at about eleven. Toni had spotted him down on the floor a
nd tipped me. He came in and shut the noise out, and glanced at Toni. I told her to go get me that tool list. That was code to go powder her nose.

  Dodd placed a haunch on my desk comer, clicked my lamp on and off. “They still don’t know a damn thing,” he said. “I just talked to Sutton.”

  “Who would Sutton be?”

  “Chief of Police. There isn’t enough yet to warrant bringing in the F.B.I, but they’re standing by.” He glanced at me. “Clint, do you think she could be doing all this for a gag? For excitement. For some kind of a laugh.”

  “It doesn’t seem reasonable to me.”

  “The police are going to keep digging. Clint, I know it’s none of my damn business but were you … intimate with her?”

  I looked him in the eye. I’d never noticed before how pale his eyes were. I smiled and said, “I guess that’s right.”

  “What’s right?”

  “That it’s none of your damn business.”

  He had the grace to flush. He got off my desk and off my back. “Well, maybe we’ll know soon.”

  “Maybe we will.”

  He left. It annoyed me that he would be sly enough to use the smoke screen of her disappearance to try to find out if she’d been cheating on him. It annoyed me, and yet it planted some serious doubts about the correctness of my bedtime conjectures about him. If he knew she was dead, having killed her, he wouldn’t be concerned about her possible promiscuity. Evidently Mary Olan had given him a hell of a time, and I couldn’t be precisely sorry.

  I had just gotten back from a late lunch, having missed the closing time of the cafeteria by minutes, when Harvey Wills phoned down to me. “Clint, I just had a call from Mr. Willis Pryor. They’re having a little conference out at his house this afternoon about this Olan girl. They want you and Dodd there. Dodd has already left. I didn’t want either of you to go at first, but Mr. Pryor hinted that it could be made official if I didn’t cooperate.”