by Gil Brewer
I remembered something: I went back into Victor’s bedroom and checked the intercom unit. Sure enough, it was turned off. He must have turned it off after it stopped working. I turned it back on and up to full-volume. His was a master control. I flipped open all the remotes.
I went back to the living room. She hadn’t moved.
“Your story, Shirley—can you make it all right?”
She stood there with one hand clamped over her mouth, the round eyes staring at me.
“Shirley,” I said. My voice cracked a little. “I’ve got to get out of here. Remember. You were out back, sitting by the Gulf. You didn’t hear anything.” I pulled her hand away from her face and said slowly and harshly, “Will you get everything straight?”
“Yes. Jack. Mayda—?”
“Never mind Mayda. Don’t even think about her. Forget she was ever around here. The less you know, the...”
“I’ve got to know.”
“Okay.” I told her about Mayda, thinking again how if she’d ever found out about Mayda and me, things wouldn’t even be this good. “Now, forget her.” I wanted to forget her.
She said, “It’s all wrong, Jack.”
“Don’t think it for a second, Shirley. Now’s when we need strength. We’re in it. There’s no backing out now.” I glanced at the bedroom. “Listen,” I said. “Already we’re wasting time. You’ve got to call Miraglia now.”
“I called him, Jack.”
“You what?”
“I called him maybe five minutes ago, before you came.”
I didn’t speak.
She said, “I knew I had to. It wouldn’t look right unless I called. I had to do what was right. I didn’t know when you’d get back. I knew if you came back when he was here, you’d see his car out front. It’s all right, Jack—don’t look like that!”
I still said nothing.
She said, “It’s all right, Jack. It’s all over. Say you love me.”
I stared at her. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“I told the doctor what had happened, how I didn’t hear him. And when I came in, he was having a bad attack. I told him the oxygen didn’t seem to do any good. I gave him a nitroglycerin pill, for his heart—but it didn’t seem to do any good, either. I said Victor fought the oxygen when I tried to help him. He said he’d known something like this would happen—that he’d be right over.”
“Listen,” I said. “Don’t call me. On your life. Don’t try to contact me. I’ll contact you.” I took her in my arms, then, because I needed somebody to hang onto, too. Only I let go of her right away, because it didn’t do any good. It was as if I were in a dream, and none of this had happened. Only it had happened. I knew I hadn’t meant it to happen. Isn’t that what they always say afterward? The whole business tumbled down over me like a big black wet tent.
Her eyes were glassy.
“Jack, don’t go and leave me all alone. I couldn’t stand it.”
“You’ll have to stand it. Right now is when we’ll both have to stand everything. Listen, the big thing now is getting that money. You hear? There’s no telling what’ll happen now. It won’t be easy. It’s going to be close, believe me. Start on that money as soon as you can. I’ll reach you, somehow.”
“But we’ll have to wait for the money. There’s always a waiting period.”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t even thinking about what she said. “We’ve got to be careful.” I ceased talking. Things were happening too fast. A car had pulled up out front, and I heard the low moan of a distant siren. Almost immediately a car door slammed.
“I’m all alone, Jack. You’re leaving me with this all alone. I can’t stand it. I don’t know whether I can do it.”
“You’ve got to do it!”
Her face took on that stunned expression. I thought she might start bawling. I shook her, listening, and knowing I had to run for it.
“I’ll get in touch with you,” I said.
I turned and ran for the kitchen.
“Jack—please!”
She was nuts. There was the sound of another car out front. Maybe an ambulance. Voices. I went on through the kitchen. It looked clean. The carving knife was on the kitchen table. She called softly again. As I went across the back porch, somebody pounded on the front door.
I ran across the back lawn with the hounds of hell after me, thinking how she might crack. She couldn’t crack. She had to do it right, damn her. If she made even one mistake, it would be all they’d need.
I was sick and scared. I wished to God I’d never met Shirley Angela....
There hadn’t been time to really know what had happened back there with her.
It began to get to me as I reached the truck. The whole thing really got to me, then. I slid under the wheel and sat there and shook. I cried. I cursed Shirley Angela, and myself, and Victor Spondell, and Doctor Miraglia, and Mayda Lamphier, and her goddamned husband for being away in Alaska.
And all the time I was like that, I knew I wanted the money. Behind all the fear and the knowing, was the thought of that money. It was a curse. It was inside, from way back in my childhood, and I knew nothing would ever tear it up out of me, either. It had been my chance, and I’d taken it. That was that. There wasn’t anything else, now—just get that money.
I had hardly started back toward town with the truck when the rest of it began gnawing. How had she made out? What had she said? Did Miraglia believe her? Had he any reason to doubt what she said? But he wouldn’t have. There was no reason. Victor was dead, and he’d said himself that he had expected something like this to happen.
Then I wondered if that was what Miraglia really meant. Or was I reading something into it that I wanted there?
I knew I’d have to go home. I would wait. How in all hell could I stand it? Not knowing what was going on? I’d told her not to contact me. That had been wrong. I should have told her to contact me as soon as she saw how things were shaping up.
What was it she’d said about having to “wait for the money?”
I turned the truck around and drove past the spot where I’d hidden it in the copse of cedar, by the lake. I knew I shouldn’t go anywhere near her place, but I couldn’t stop myself. I drove down the street before I reached her street, a block away, trying to look across the block, between the houses. I couldn’t see anything.
I had to know something. Anything. Just to look at the house, see it—know it was there. See if Miraglia was still there.
I drove around the block and came back up her street. There were no cars parked out front, no sign of anything. The house was dark.
She wasn’t there. I sensed the house’s emptiness.
Well, it made things worse. I turned at the end of the block and drove back past the house again. It looked black and cold. It looked dead.
Next door, in Mayda Lamphier’s living room, the lights still burned. And out there in the night, cold water flowed across her dead eyes and through her hair.
I drove back to the store, picked up my car, and headed for home.
The minute that apartment door closed behind me, I was a goner. I stood there in the darkness for about a half a second, then I jumped for the light switch. I got the lights on, and began pacing.
In the kitchen, I stood by the sink with the water turned on, a glass in my hand. I set the glass down. The next thing, I was in the bedroom, undressing. The water was still running. I went out there, turned it off, and came back and sat on the edge of the bed.
I tried to take a shower. I was under the water for maybe ten seconds, then outside the shower stall, listening. Had the phone rung?
Well, you just wait in the bright silence.
I began to pray the phone would ring.
In the kitchen again, I got out a fifth of gin, and poured a slug down, straight from the bottle. I set the bottle on the drainboard, turned, and just made it to the bathroom in time. That gin bounced like a tennis ball.
But I was persistent. I went back and poured some mor
e down, and that stayed. Only it didn’t do any good.
I went to bed, turned off the light. Like a shot, I was sitting up in bed. They would find the bloody blanket. The body would come up, floating, the hair swirling in the water of the canal under bright noon sunlight.
I turned the light on and sat there, smoking.
Miraglia would be questioning her now.
I got out of bed and started walking. I stood over the telephone and stared at it. If it rang, I would die.
Back in bed with pad and pencil, I listed everything, and tried to find mistakes we’d made, tried to figure where we’d really gone wrong. Finally I stopped that.
Shirley would be the first person questioned when Mayda Lamphier’s disappearance came to light.
I had to stop. They’d come and find me babbling.
“Him?” they’d say. “Oh, that was Jack Ruxton. Yeah, too bad. Used to run a TV and radio store. Yeah. Flipped his wig over a screwy teenage broad.”
I’ll get mine, I thought. I’ll get mine.
The money. That’s all that counted, all that meant anything. Money was something you could depend on. It was substantial, if you had enough of it. I would have enough. That money was what could keep me sane. The money could perform miracles.
All I had to do was get my hands on it.
That’s all.
Then I could forget.
The phone rang. I leaped at it.
“Jack?” she said. “Everything’s all right. I knew you’d want to know.”
For a second I couldn’t speak with the relief.
I said, “Where you calling from?”
“A place, on the way home. It’s all right. It’s a public phone booth, and there’s nobody around.”
“Are you all right?”
“I think so.”
“What the hell do you mean by that? You think so? If something’s wrong, for God’s sake, tell me.”
“Jack?”
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
“Certainly, I love you. You know I love you.”
She hesitated. “Then everything’s all right.”
My hand was sweating on the phone. I changed hands, and bit my teeth together hard. A goddamned cryptic woman. There was nothing in the world like a cryptic woman. My voice was hoarse. “Shirley?”
“I told you, everything’s all right. What more can I say?”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened, Jack.”
“Did it go over? Did you tell your story all right?”
“Of course.”
“Well, what happened?”
“You don’t have to shout, Jack. I can hear you.”
“I’m not shouting. I just want to know.”
“Well, Doctor Miraglia came in. He acted kind of put out—mad at himself, something like that. I mean, I think it was because he hated losing a patient. Victor in particular. He told me he’d been afraid something like this might happen.”
“How did he say that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, did he act suspicious?”
“No. Not that I could tell. Why should he?”
“Forget it.”
She said, “He seemed terribly concerned over Victor dying, though. I mean, he acted really sorry. It seemed to hit him awfully hard—I mean, for a doctor. After all, doctors see a lot of that sort of thing.”
“Shirley. Exactly how do you mean? How did he act? What did he say? This is important, I think.”
“Well, I can’t say any more than I have. I told him the intercom system apparently wasn’t working. I said I was outside, and everything, just as we planned. So I must have missed hearing him call. I put on a—pretty good act. I think.”
“You didn’t overdo it.”
“No. I was careful. They took Victor away in the ambulance. Then Doctor Miraglia tried out the intercom, and agreed that was how it must have happened. He told me I mustn’t feel bad about it.”
“You’re trying to say something, Shirley. Goddamn it. Say it, whatever it is. Let it come out.”
“I’m scared.”
“Well, so am I. You don’t go around doing what we did every day in the week. You’ve got to stop being scared.”
“It’s not so much Victor. It’s Mayda.”
For a bright moment, in my mind’s eye, I saw Shirley ramming that carving knife into Mayda Lamphier’s back.
“Just don’t worry.” I said.
“You think I should report her missing, Jack? You think that might be the thing to do?”
“Will you forget her!”
“Yes. All right.”
“What else did Miraglia say?”
“To be honest, Jack—he acted as if it were his own father dying. That’s exactly how he acted.”
“Oh.”
“Somebody might come. I’d better go.”
“Yeah.”
Her voice was pleading. “Say you love me.”
I told her I loved her.
“I want to see you so badly,” she said.
“Me too,” I said. And at that moment I meant it. Alone, I faced the longest night of my life.
Eleven
It was in the papers the next day. Victor Spondell had died of heart failure, brought on by a long-time respiratory ailment. Surviving was his adopted daughter, Miss Shirley Angela. There was a brief summary of his background.
There was nothing about Mayda Lamphier.
Well, I began to know what this business means when they talk about a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. It was one hell of a pull. I wanted to go out there to the canal, and just see if everything was all right. Just stand there and stare at the spot where the car was, and where she was. Just to reassure myself.
I didn’t go. But that pull was hard.
I wanted to see Shirley plenty bad. I didn’t like the way she’d sounded over the phone. I couldn’t call her, I couldn’t go near her place. I had to wait.
I knew it was too early for her to start checking on the money. Or, was it? How did an innocent person act? Would they go right down to the bank and put in their claim for the money? Or would they wait for what they call a “proper” length of time?
It was all I thought about. In the midst of the turmoil, it was the money that was bright and shining.
I didn’t hang around the store much that day. I couldn’t think right. I kept having the urge to go up to somebody and say, “Well, for gosh sakes, look here. That Victor Spondell kicked off. What you think of that?”
Nobody mentioned his dying. Naturally. Who was Victor Spondell to them? He was nothing. But just let it come out how he died, and the whole town would shake itself apart.
Shirley didn’t call. I went home and sat by the phone, but there was no word about anything. I didn’t sleep. I just lay there in bed with the light on and stared at the ceiling, smoking one cigarette after the other.
I tried to think of Rio, but even that wasn’t any good anymore. Nothing was any good.
There was no word for two days. Then, in the morning paper:
MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF WOMAN
Canal Holds Tragic Secret
Tangled about the steering post and wheel of a sporty convertible, a young woman died last night, trapped under the murky waters of the old Black-land Canal, one mile east of this city. Authorities are concerned over the discovery by two fishermen of the as yet unidentified body. The car was a convertible Pontiac of late vintage, registered under the name Henry C. Lamphier, this city. Mr. Lamphier will be located. Anyone having a clue as to the possible identification of the woman should immediately telephone Police Headquarters, the Sheriff’s Department, or the Florida State Highway Patrol.
Since this newspaper was going to press when the item was disclosed, it is possible that by the time you read this, the body will have been identified through the automobile’s registration.
Two fishermen (both names withheld by request) were spearing along
the mossy banks of the century-old canal late last night, in a skiff, when they made the somewhat macabre discovery. One said, “The less I am reminded of this, the better. It was a terrible thing. I never want to go spearing again.” Police are concerned over the manner in which the woman’s body was entangled with the car. They believe there is the possibility of foul play. Taking into consideration the fact that....
I didn’t exactly stop reading. My hands crumpled the paper into a wad, then shredded it, and for some reason all I could see in my mind was Shirley taunting Victor Spondell, as he died. I knew it was only a question of time before they knew who the “unidentified woman” was. They probably knew now.
Shirley, standing over Victor Spondell, laughing at him, because I knew she had felt nothing over his death. Not really. It had been removal of pain, of fierce pain, and inside her was nothing but angry composure over his death.
Mayda was another thing. They would go to her, question her. I didn’t know what to do. But I began to know that she had to get to the bank, and get her hands on that money. At the same time I realized, as I’d thought before, that it might not look right, taking any of it so soon. If things went right, then we wouldn’t have to go near that money.
If.
What an unholy word.
Somehow I had to get hold of myself. Now was the time when being calm counted. There was no real reason to fly apart. Nobody had accused Shirley or me of anything. There was no reason even to cast a suspicious glance our way, if you looked at it the way the law would look at it.
An old man who had been on the tricky edge of death for a long time had finally died. At the same time, a woman had died in a car accident. They would backtrack and there would be the gas station attendant to verify the fact that she had been driving while drunk.
So would they find alcohol in her blood, if they performed an autopsy? I didn’t know. In all probability, Mayda Lamphier had been drinking to some extent before she came over and slammed into Shirley. Only she hadn’t been drinking much. Maybe it would be enough.
I went into the living room, still holding the wadded newspaper in my hand. It was late morning. I hadn’t slept. I felt like hell. I had to see her, talk with her, and I could think of no way. If I tried calling her, there was every chance somebody might be there, questioning her about Mayda.