by Cave, Hugh
"If you ask me," said a woman's voice behind Will, "there is something even worse going on here. Did you see that thing come out of the lake last night, Will?"
He turned and found himself confronted by one of the nicer women in the building. Ruby Ellstrom, 302. Slim, graceful, usually smiling, but now dead solemn as she shook her head at him.
"Something came out of the lake, Ruby?" It was, of course, possible. According to the gossip, Ed Lawson and the new fellow, Haydn Clay, swore they had seen a 'gator. There were some pretty fair-sized turtles, too, and at least one pair of otters.
"Yes, it did. It frightened the ducks, and the noise they made woke me up. You didn't see it?"
Will shook his head. "What was it, exactly?"
"Well, it came up out of the lake after the ducks flew away in a fright. A misty kind of thing, but human. I swear it was human—in shape, at least. I woke Jerry and he saw it too. We think it was a woman, but not a real one. You know what I'm trying to say. You've written about that sort of thing."
A woman? Will thought.
"Of course, if you didn't see it, I can't expect you to believe me," Ruby went on. "But maybe someone did, even at that hour. I'm going to ask around."
She went away. Another woman appeared at Will's side, even before he could empty his glass, which at the moment he badly wanted to do. Bee Broderick, 603, his next-door neighbor. Not one he was terribly fond of.
"Will, have you heard anything?"
She meant, of course, had he heard anything from the police or the detective agency people. He shook his head. "No, Bee. Not yet."
"Not a word?"
"They said it would probably be a while."
"Did she take any clothes, Will?"
"I don't know. She has so many clothes and shoes, I can't decide whether any are missing. I've never been one to keep track of such things."
"But she did take a suitcase? You must know that."
"I don't. She has a closet full of luggage. All I know is that she didn't take her car. But she may have been meeting someone, or have arranged for someone to come for her. I just don't know."
Bee stood before him, moving her head slowly from side to side while breathing heavily. To this woman almost everything was an invitation to dramatize. She and her husband had run a motel in Miami before retiring to the Florida heartland, and had known and catered to a number of Miami's entertainment-world people. She even knew a woman in the detective agency he had hired to find Vicky.
"They'll find her, Will. Don't worry," she said, and before turning away, reached out to pat his arm.
Others asked about Vicky in the hour that followed. The disappearance of his wife had really fired their curiosity.
"Do you suppose something happened to her in Jamaica, Will? You do get into some strange situations, you know."
"It's possible. She was a bit edgy and restless before we left there. It's one of the reasons we came back when we did."
"Has she any money, Will?"
"Oh, Vicky always has money. I'm sure that's not a problem."
"She wasn't thinking straight, Will. Could it be change of life?"
"I'm more inclined to blame Jamaica."
"But what did she do in Jamaica?"
"Oh, the usual things."
He should have obtained some pictures of Vicky doing some of the things she had done in Jamaica, he decided, even if taking them would have meant resorting to stealth and endangering himself. A shot, for instance, of her sitting in that hellish house on the edge of the island's notorious Cockpit Country, being instructed in the dark arts by the infamous Sister Merle. Confronted with such evidence, the condo ladies might realize that his tall, blond, beautiful Victoria was not the woman they thought they had known so well.
Would pictures convince them? Yes, probably. No one seeing Sister Merle, even in a photograph, could fail to see that the obeah woman was no ordinary creature. Those laser-beam eyes, the love of evil engraved in that threatening face . . . ah, yes, the right kind of photos would surely be convincing. Especially if he had one of Vicky poring over her black opal with the obeah woman, the two of them holding hands across the table while peering down at the stone as though seeking to blend their very souls in its smoky depths.
But, of course, he hadn't any pictures. Only memories that kept him awake nights or gave him nightmares when he slept.
When satisfied they had learned all they were likely to, his questioners drifted away. Will filled his glass again, doubling the bourbon content this time because his mouth felt dry and his temples had begun to throb. It was so hellishly hard to be polite to all these people, yet he knew that not all of them were merely curious; some really liked him.
He sipped the liquor slowly, savoring it, and had almost emptied the glass when his pleasure was interrupted by a return visit from Ruby Ellstrom. The slim redhead had Haydn Clay in tow.
"Will, I've found someone else who saw it!" she declared triumphantly. "Do you two know each other?"
"Not well," Will said, meaning not at all. The silver-haired man was a recent purchaser about whom he had heard little. The board of directors always knew where a newcomer was from, of course—this one was from Los Angeles—but it sometimes took a while to find out how much one was worth, what he did or had done for a living, and such personal matters as the state of his love life. Accepting Clay's hand, Will said with a frown, "You saw it too?"
"I certainly saw something come out of the lake last night."
"Describe it," Ruby Ellstrom urged him. "Mr. Platt writes books about the supernatural."
"Do you, indeed?" Clay said. "Under your own name?"
"And others."
"I must read some. I enjoy that kind of thing."
"His last one," Ruby said, "was about Haiti and zombies and voodoo, and I had nightmares for weeks. But tell him, Mr. Clay. Tell him what you just told me."
Will looked at the man and waited, expecting the usual effort to find words that might impress a man who used them for a living. He was pleasantly surprised when Clay said with a shrug, "Hell, I don't know what I saw. I'm in 301, walking back to bed after a trip to the john. I heard the ducks. Wondered if the alligator we'd seen was in among 'em. I grabbed a pair of binoculars I keep on my dresser and saw this blob of vapor, mist, fog, whatever it was, sort of gliding up out of the water. It was no illusion. Believe me, I saw it." He paused, scowling. "Another thing. I got the distinct impression it was —well, what's another word for 'vile'? 'Evil'?"
"I had the very same impression," Ruby Ellstrom said in triumph, and turned to wag a finger at Will. "Anyway, he saw it, just as Jerry and I did!"
"I hope you don't think I invented it," Will said. That second drink, almost straight, had done what a drink at the typewriter sometimes did: loosened him up and let him shed the shackles a bit. Of course, when he wrote in that condition he almost always had to rewrite.
"No, but I did hope you could explain it," Ruby said.
"I haven't a clue."
A man—over six-feet, craggy-faced and windblown—approached with an unfamiliar woman at his side. To Haydn Clay he said, "Hi, pal," and to Ruby Ellstrom, "Hello, Ruby," and to Will, "You still around? I thought you'd have run for cover by now."
"I'm durable," Will said.
"Want you all to meet the lady who bought 504 from the Lemkes," said big Ed Lawson, the condo's manager, referring to an apartment whose owners had just moved. "She moves in day after tomorrow. Staying over at the motel until her furniture arrives."
He turned to the stranger. "This is the writer I was telling you about, Mrs. Kimball. Willard Pratt. Lives over you on the top floor, but spends a lot of time in the West Indies. You hear a typewriter in the middle of the night, it'll be Will scaring hell out of his readers."
She laughed softly and Will looked at her. Small, almost tiny, but pretty as a picture in every way, from sandaled feet to the top of her saucy dark hair. She was maybe forty, a few years younger than he. "Mrs. Kimball," he said.
>
"Lynne." She had a way of using her voice, too. As if sometimes she used it for singing. "Where in the West Indies? Do you know Jamaica at all?"
"A little."
"I used to live in Mandeville. My husband worked for the bauxite people."
"You must know Christiana, then," Will said.
"We went there on market day sometimes. It was more fun than shopping in Mandeville."
"I've just returned from there."
Peering at them both as they gazed at each other, big Ed Lawson said with a broad grin, "Why don't we all have a drink on this? I'll scout up some ice."
3
Don't Go Down that Lonesome Road
In apartment 602 of Lakeside Manor the Abbotts had finished supper and begun their evening. For LeRoy Abbott this was a routine that almost never varied. Armed with an expensive cigar made 100-odd miles away in Tampa, he would settle into his swivel rocker before the tv, watch anything at all until the cigar was finished, then close his eyes and fall asleep. Seventy-one years old and weighing 260 pounds, he almost never left the apartment after his evening meal.
Before retiring to Florida, Lee Abbott had owned and operated a sand and gravel business in Ohio. His present wife, Constance, twenty-one years younger than he, had been his secretary when his first wife died.
Coming from her bedroom—they slept in separate rooms now—Connie paused beside her husband's chair and said, "How do I look, hon?"
He swiveled his head to squint at her. "Good enough to call on a dame like her, that's for sure. You takin' the car?"
"Why should I? It's beautiful out."
"What about that thing they were talkin' about at the party?" He himself hadn't gone to the cocktail party on the common the day before yesterday. He never went to them. Too much yakety-yak, he said. It was she who had told him about the ghostly what-was-it supposedly seen by the Ellstroms and Haydn Clay.
She frowned. "That's right. And the dogs. Maybe I should take the car, Lee."
But he was already staring at the boob-tube again and surrounding himself with a cloud of smoke that must have made the picture all but invisible to him.
Connie waved good-bye and made for the door, stopping briefly at a full-length mirror attached to the wall of the entrance hall. Not bad, she decided. The woman standing there in the glass was a trifle plump, maybe—cooking for a glutton like LeRoy, you were bound to eat too much yourself—but, by God, she still had a good figure, and her hair was as black and shiny as when she had been Connie Pecora. The last few years might have taken the starch out of Lee, but they hadn't had any visible effect on her.
Or any other effect, she thought with a secret smile as she quietly closed the door behind her.
It was about seven o'clock, and warm. The Brodericks in 603 had their door open, and so did Will Platt, the writer, in the apartment next to them. Most people left their doors open now, to let the lake breeze flow through their apartments. As she headed for the elevator she could hear Will Platt's typewriter clicking. Poor fellow. With his wife walking out on him like that, obviously not in her right mind, he must be sick with worry and working at this hour just to keep from thinking about it.
In the elevator she pressed the second-floor button, then when the car stopped went down the hall to 201, the door of which was closed. She rang the bell. The door opened, and the woman who faced her with auburn hair in blue plastic curlers was her best friend Pearl Gautier, a fifty-year-old former nurse.
"Well, hi," Pearl said cheerfully. "Come on in."
Connie wagged her head. "Can't. I'm on my way over to Mae Henig's." Pearl knew Mae Henig, played bridge with her sometimes. She didn't know about the rest of it, though. One had to be discreet. "I just stopped by to ask if you're busy tomorrow."
"Uh-uh. In fact, I was thinking of calling to see if you'd like to go shopping."
"Two minds with a single thought. Lakeland?" There were some nice stores in Lakeland and of course LeRoy wouldn't go—"That far to buy a dress?" he'd grumble. "What the hell's wrong with the stores around here?"
"Good," Pearl said. "We can have lunch at the Peony on the way back."
"See you in the morning, then. About nine?"
"Can't we make it earlier?"
"Eight, then." No need to add, "I'll come by for you." Pearl was uncomfortable with LeRoy and never came upstairs.
"Give my best to Mae," Pearl Gautier said.
Connie rode the elevator down to the first floor, turned left along the green carpet, and made for her car: a Continental, because LeRoy had the money and insisted on showing everyone else he had it. As she approached the machine a much more modest car, a compact, pulled into the 504 spot nearby. That one's door swung open and a woman popped out, very nearly as abruptly as a cork from a champagne bottle. Perhaps if she hadn't had a bag of groceries in her arms she would have stepped out even more briskly.
They faced each other. "Well, hello," Connie said. "It's Mrs. Kimball, isn't it?" She'd heard that the new owner had spent the last few years in Jamaica, and that her husband had died down there, of a heart attack or something.
"Yes, I'm Lynne Kimball." Despite the bag of groceries, she managed to extend a hand. Nice hand, Connie thought as she touched it. Smooth, young, like a teenager's, but firm in its grip.
"I'm Connie Abbott. 602. It's nice meeting you, Lynne."
"I'm glad to meet you, Connie. Everyone's so friendly here."
Oh, brother, Connie thought. If you only knew. "Can I help with anything? I mean, do you have more than that to carry? I know you just moved in today."
"Thanks, but this is the last."
She's going to be someone I'll like, Connie decided. No question about it. Bright, cheerful—my God, she looks nineteen years old. "I'm glad we met like this," she said. "I'll be looking forward to seeing you again."
"Thank you. You're kind."
"Night, Lynne."
"Good night, Connie."
Connie watched her for a moment in the glare of the parking area lamps, then slid into the Continental. Out of the parking area she swung left past the common, along the road where the dogs had been found. What about those dogs, she wondered uneasily for perhaps the hundredth time.
The talk around the building was that the vet had discovered no poison in their bodies and was completely at a loss for an explanation for their deaths. There were no broken bones. They hadn't been strangled or smothered in any way. "It's almost as if they died of fright," the vet had said.
Of course, he was only a young fellow with little experience. There might be some acceptable explanation later, if the dogs' owner decided to foot the cost of further investigation.
But "died of fright"? And on the same night Haydn Clay and the Ellstroms had seen that ghostly thing walk out of the lake and float across the lawn in the direction of the common?
Connie thought about it as she drove along the lake shore, with the moonlit water shining darkly on one side and the golf course a pale green carpet on the other. Less than a quarter mile from the condominium she turned right, drove past three attractive houses backed up to the golf course, and pulled into the driveway of the fourth. A door beside the garage opened as she slid out of the car.
"Hi, Connie," Mae Henig said. "Coming in?" She was taller than Connie and thinner. A few years older. "Do you mind if I don't, Mae? I'm late."
"Run along. Maybe we can have a drink after."
Connie waved her thanks and, leaving the car there, returned on foot to the road. It was an estate road like the one at the condominium, but a less traveled one, barely wide enough for two cars to pass on it. Actually it served only seven homes. Passing number five, she turned in at number six, and again the door by the driveway swung open as she approached. This one was opened by a man.
He let her step past him in silence, shut the door and, turning, swung her into his arms and placed a big hand on her behind. "How much time do we have, baby?" he asked.
"I'm not sure. If I'm late tonight, he may start to w
orry."
"Because of what happened to those dogs, you mean?"
"And the thing from the lake." The story had gotten around and she was sure he must have heard it. He played golf daily and almost always had a drink or two at the club afterward.
"Our aquatic ghostie," he said with a grin, brushing her cheek with his lips. "So if Lee gets worried about you, he'll call. No problem."
LeRoy wouldn't call here, of course. He would telephone Mae Henig. In the three months she had been having the affair with Nino he never had phoned, but Mae knew what to do if it should happen. "She's in the bathroom," Mae would say; "I'll have her call you back when she comes out, LeRoy." Then she would call here and Connie would return the call from here. As Nino had said, no problem.
They walked through the living room to the bedroom, Nino's hand still pressing her buttocks. He had to stoop a little to do that; he was six foot four. A very handsome six foot four, too—once a college basketball player of renown, now the Heron Lake Club's most talented golfer. Sometimes she wondered why he had never married. Was it because there had always been women like her?
"You know," he said, starting to undress, "this story about the spook in the lake has got the whole place talking. What's your opinion?"
"They saw something. At least, the Ellstroms did—they're good, sober people and wouldn't have invented a thing like that just to make waves. I don't know about Clay. He's new."
"The Ellstroms saw something, then. But what?"
"Well, it was some kind of mist, maybe, rising from the lake. The stuff you see in swamps sometimes under certain conditions. Parts of our lake are pretty marshy, you know. There's often a mist over the water in the morning."
He shook his head, and she sensed he was going to be argumentative this evening. "They're supposed to have seen this weirdie in the middle of the night, lady. And it wasn't just hanging over the water. It came out of the lake and floated up over the condo lawn. It had the shape of a woman."
"Oh, come on. Ruby was the one who told that story, and you know her, how she tends to exaggerate."