“I think so,” Ralph said.
“The bastard,” I said. “He's asking Lydia about Deirdre? Why the hell doesn't he lay off? Deirdre's dead.”
“I'm not sure if it's entirely about Deirdre,” Ralph admitted after a while. “I don't know how to handle things like this, Drum. Maybe I could, if Lydia weren't so strange. I hardly know her, the way she's acting. I'm glad you're here, Drum,” he said impulsively. “You're that kind of guy. You make me feel better about this.”
The chain on the left rear wheel was loose. It flapped and clanked. I said, “Is Marianne Wilder getting in everyone's hair too?”
“Oh, no. Not her. We all like Marianne. Everyone likes her.”
Half a dozen small ranch houses in soft pastel Colors and with louvered carports clustered at the base of the mountain. It was late afternoon, now, with the sun's oblique rays a rich, glowing yellow.
“Ralph,” I said. “There's something you want to tell me, isn't there? Something you haven't said? “
“Yes, but—”
“I want to point out that you won't be able to get it out in front of all the company you're probably having.”
“Oh, it isn't as bad as an that. Cabot and Miss Wilder are staying in Escondido. It's only a few miles away.”
Ralph parked the Dodge alongside one of the ranch houses, not bothering to pull up into the carport. No aproned housewife came rushing out to meet her returning spouse with a wifely kiss. Ralph trudged up an azalea-bordered path with me alongside him. The house, which was furnished with colonial pieces in rich maple tones, was deserted.
“Oh, Christ,” Ralph said very softly. “She knew I was coming in this afternoon. She might have at least . . . Hello, what's this?” Ralph had gone over to a maple tea-cart on which, incongruously, a large tobacco humidor sat. Near the humidor was a slip of paper which Ralph picked up and read.
“Anything the matter?” I said.
“No.” He was smiling now. He said, “Look, this is kind of awkward. I hope you understand. Would it be all right if you made yourself at home here for a couple of hours? There's gin and vermouth in the cabinet over there and ice in the refrigerator.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Incidentally, I haven't mentioned it, but I assume you're staying a while. We'll put you up, naturally.”
“Thanks, but I can get a room in Escondido.”
“Honest, Drum. I'm not trying to run out on you. I— listen. Things haven't been right for me and Lydia. I don't blame her? Her nerves have been shot, Drum. I haven't put a hand on her since-Deirdre died. I—I haven't even kissed her good night.” His eyes got wistful. He was talking to me, but not seeing me. His voice had a new, schoolboyish enthusiasm.
“Maybe now it's different. Maybe now she's ready. Lydia. We have this place up the mountain. Overlook, it's called. A cabin at the edge of a cliff a thousand feet above the valley. We went back up there yesterday for a little while and it was almost as if Lydia were seeing it for the first time. She left this note. She thought it would be nice if we spent the night up there. She's waiting for me now. The cabin has one of those fireplaces with a spit, you know. We'll have dinner there, Lydia and I, and then—”
“Look,” I said. “I'm going down to Escondido. I'll see you tomorrow.”
“That's out of the question now. Your car is up at the observatory, remember? We'll only stay at Overlook a couple of hours. Well be back later tonight. Go ahead and raid the icebox. It's usually well stocked.”
Ralph insisted on getting out Martini fixings for me. When he was finished stirring the cocktails I said, “Okay, that's fine. Now scram. Go on up to your woman, Ralph.”
He got into his mackinaw and smiled at me like a high-school junior going to the prom in his first tuxedo. He had exchanged the lumberjacket for the mackinaw, probably because the mackinaw had some sentimental memories for his wife. He went out the door beaming from ear to ear. He took Lydia's note with him and was reading it again on the way out. All I could catch over his shoulder was the fact that it was typewritten and not very long.
I had myself three Martinis and two cigarettes and then the telephone rang. I picked it up and said, “Homerson residence.”
“Is that you, Mr. Homerson?” It was a good, deep, woman's voice. It sounded like a large woman. It wasn't. It was a small, pretty one. It was Marianne Wilder.
“No, Marianne,” I said. “I just landed in my flying saucer. This is Chet Drum.”
She said she was very surprised. She said thank you for your letter of introduction to the Homersons. I said, well, was she ready to write her story on Deirdre yet. She clucked her tongue and said no, she was beginning to think she'd never be ready to write it. I said now I was surprised. I said I'd like to hear all about it and where was she. In Escondido. I could join her there, I said, except that my car was parked at the observatory and I was in the Homerson's house. They would be out for several hours. She had me take a peek at the contents of the refrigerator. She held the wire and I did so and came back and told her what was lacking. She told me she would be over as soon as she could find a grocery store.
She was, but by then I—had finished the pitcher of Martinis and had refilled it with a mixture containing more gin and less vermouth. She came in and removed her trench coat as she walked across the living room toward me. She walked with a boyish gait, and she had small trim hips and high pretty breasts under a jersey blouse. Her hair had been mussed by the wind that blew down off Hall Mountain. One lock hung down over her forehead and she brushed it back with one hand and then came right into my arms, very definite about it, and got her jersey-sleeved arms around my neck and pulled my head down and kissed me.
“Well,” I said. “Duane hasn't given you the ring yet.”
“Oh, cut it out, you big dope. I was worried about you. I was' damn worried. You just up and disappeared. I couldn't figure out what happened to you. I stopped trying to figure it out. I said a prayer for you every night. That's what the kiss is for. Because you're all right. Don't get any ideas. Don't try to do what you tried to do in your apartment or I'll have to stop kissing you. Only I like to kiss you.”
“Take a breath,” I said. “Your face is turning purple.”
I said it because this girl could excite me, but if she didn't want it. I didn't.
“Oh, you.” She stood back a pace and looked at me. “Why—you're sunburned!”
The tan was wearing off a little but you could still see it. I nodded, and smiled, pouring two Martinis.
“While I worried and didn't know what to think because you disappeared so mysteriously, do you mean to say you were on a vacation somewhere, rubbing Copper-tone on all those muscles and just lying around in the sun?”
“No Coppertone,” I said.
“Men!” said Marianne Wilder, and guzzled her Martini. She plucked the olive from the glass with thumb and forefinger and popped it in her mouth. “Umm,” she said. “That's delicious.”
“You drank it so fast, how could” you tell?”
“Oh, the Martini's all right. But I meant the olive. They ought to make them the other way around. A lot of olive in a little Martini sauce. Can I have a cigarette, please?”
I gave her one and lit it and said, “What's the matter with your story on Deirdre?”
“Oh, everything. I hardly know where to begin. But that isn't what's bothering me.”
“No? What is?”
“Give me another Martini, please.” She drank that one just as fast, and sighed over the olive. “I haven't had anything to eat since brunch,” she said. “It's going to my head already.”
“You were going to tell me what's bothering you.”
“Duane.” She speared an olive from the jar with the little plastic trident. “I never knew he was such a louse. What am I going to do, Chet? I still love the-guy, but I also know he's a rotten stinker.”
“What's he doing, painting all the telescope lenses black?”
“Oh, cut it out. He seems determined
to drag Deirdre's name in the mud. If he can't do that, he'll settle for Lydia. One of those girls was a Red.”
“It was Deirdre,” I said.
“Well, Duane says there's no way of proving which. He doesn't seem to care which. It's as if he was out to get them. What makes him like that, Chet?”
I said I didn't know what made him like that. I said it was one of his jobs to find subversives. Live ones, Marianne pointed out as we rustled up a dinner with what was in the refrigerator and what was in the packages in her Studebaker. We had macaroni and cheese and what was left of a large roast chicken and frozen asparagus and whole-wheat donuts and coffee and beer. It was all very good. I even helped Marianne with the dishes. That is, I started to. But she wouldn't let me. She said I wasn't the type. She said she wanted to remember me always without an apron and without dishpan hands.
I found some dark, sweet-smelling Jamaica rum where the gin and vermouth had been. I sipped some from a snifter glass while Marianne finished the dishes. She came out into the living room and looked at the rum in the snifter glass and said, “What's that? It's too dark for brandy.”
“Rum,” I said.
“You know, I never tasted rum except in eggnogs.” She took the snifter glass away from me and tasted its contents. “Say, now,” she said, “that's all right. That's good. That's much better than Martinis.”
I thought so too, at the moment. I looked at my wrist watch. It was almost eight o'clock. I wondered how soon the Homersons would return. I looked at Marianne and hoped they wouldn't hurry. She was a girl you could relax with. She came over and sat on my lap, finishing the rum. “It always makes Duane uncomfortable,” she said. “It makes him squirm.” She had been high all through dinner, maintaining her Martini glow with the beer. She kept it smoldering with the rum. For some reason, she wanted to. Because of Cabot, probably.
“What makes him squirm?” I said. “Sitting on his lap like this. He doesn't like me to sit on his lap. He's very stuffy. You're an uncomplicated man, Chester Drum, and I like you very much.” She smiled. “Only I still don't want you to do anything but kiss me.”
I kissed her and she twisted her torso around and snuggled against me. She got her cheek alongside mine and was purring contentedly.
“Lady,” I said, “you either better expect more than kissing or climb off of me and get way over there on the other end of the sofa.” I was amazed at the way I acted with Marianne. I didn't ask other females. It was expected. There was a proper moment, worked up to, and no asking was necessary. Maybe it was because Marianne looked so small, and young, and helpless.
“Well?” I said.
She was still purring. I leaned off to the left and craned my neck so I could look at her. Purring?, It was a very dainty female snore. Marianne had gone to sleep.
I eased-her off me gently and stretched her out on the sofa. I found a magazine in the kitchen, came back into the living room with it, plunked myself down on a soft, high-backed chair.
I remember looking at my watch once, and it said nine o'clock. Then I must have drifted off to sleep. The next thing I knew, I was standing up suddenly. Headlights were gleaming outside. Marianne was still asleep on the big sofa. ,1 went to the door, but it opened before I could reach it.
Lydia stood silhouetted against the darkness. She stared at me and said, “Chet.” She started to fall. I ran to her and grabbed her. Her face was beautiful but blank. It looked like a wax dummy's face.
She collapsed against me. She said, “Ralph's dead.” Then she fainted.
Chapter Seventeen
MARIANNE STRETCHED languidly, sat up and said, “What's all the noise about?”
Instead of answering, I carried Lydia over to the sofa and sat her down. I tried to make her. drink some of the rum, but she coughed and gagged on it. I told “Marianne to get a cold cloth in the bathroom. “What is it?” Marianne said. “What's happened?” Then she looked at me and stopped asking questions.
I stroked Lydia's temples with the cold cloth. When her eyelids began to flutter, I tried the rum again. She gagged a little but held it down. She opened her eyes and said, “Ralph fell off the cliff at Overlook. You better call the police.” She hiccuped. She sobbed. The sobs shook her body, but she didn't cry. It would be better if she had. Her eyes were open now, but she wasn't seeing anything.
“Better tell me the whole thing,” I said, but she didn't hear me.
“Ralph,” she said. “Ralph's dead.”
I told Marianne to” watch her. I went to the phone and asked the operator to get me the police. A moment later a man's voice said, “Sheriff's office.”
“Where?” I said.
“Escondido, of course. Who's this?”
I told him my name, which meant nothing. I said I was calling from the Homerson house near Hall Mountain. That ranch development where the astronomers and their families live? he asked. Yes. What was the trouble? He'd better get up here, I said. Oh, no, mister. You got it wrong. He wasn't the sheriff. He was the sheriffs brother-in-law, Sammy Snavely. He answered calls for the sheriff at night. Then get your brother-in-law up here, I said. Mrs. Homerson just got back from Overlook on the mountain. She said her husband fell off. Off of Overlook? God, that was a thousand feet straight up. The sheriff would be along as soon as his brother-in-law Sammy Snavely could find him.
Lydia had stopped hiccuping when I finished with the phone. She was still sobbing but trying to smoke a cigarette. “I called the sheriff's office,” I told her. “They'll be here soon. Want to let us know what happened first?”
“We always used to go up there, Ralph and me. We had dinner in the cabin. It's an old caretaker cabin which has been there since before the observatory. We “ate a good dinner. Ralph liked it very much. There was a bottle of Chianti, his favorite. You know, in one of those straw containers. He says it's the only alcoholic beverage he can hold. Afterwards, we went outside. He'd been working with photographs all day, he said. He made a joke about how people always think astronomers spend their time looking at big, far things. Someone's got to look at the photographic plates, he said. He liked the distant view from Overlook.
“If you go to the very edge of the cliff,. you can see the lights of Escondido. There used to be a guard rail there, but only the posts are left now. It was very cold, but beautiful. Ralph took the bottle of Chianti with him. There was a little left. He tilted it and drank. He leaned over to see the lights of Escondido. I think he tripped. He stood on the edge and looked”—looked very funny, swinging his arms like that. I tried to hold him. He's-a lot heavier than I am. He went over. I had to-let go. He almost took me with him.
“I didn't know what to do. There's a phone in the cabin at Overlook. I should have called the police from there. I didn't know you were here, Chet. Ralph hadn't mentioned it. But I had to drive home. I kept on thinking: go home, hurry up and go home. Everything will be all right. You were dreaming. It's a nightmare. Ralph will be waiting there for you. Go home. Oh my God in heaven, Chet. Oh God. Oh, oh,” she sobbed. “Ralph's dead.”
I gave her more rum to drink. Marianne sat by her, holding her hand.
The sheriff came an hour later. He wore a Stetson hat on his big head. He had an enormous' nose with a fine network of blue veins covering it. “Sometimes Sammy don't get it right,” he said by way of introduction and apology. “Man fall off of Overlook?”
“This time he got it right,” I said.
“Goddamn sorry to hear that. Well, nothing to do but go on up there.”
“Mind if I come along?”
“Will the lady be all right?”
Marianne said she would take care of Lydia. I went outside with the sheriff. It was a fine clear night with the sky very black and full of stars. There was no moon. Looking up at the sky tonight, you could see why they had put the two-hundred-inch telescope here on Hall Mountain.
We drove several hundred feet up the Star Highway and then on a narrow unpaved road. It twisted and climbed among pine trees. There was a st
rong smell of pine in the clear air. We went up to the cabin but didn't find anything. I hadn't thought we would. Inside the cabin, the paper plates had not been cleared from dinner. A T-bone, the flesh stripped from it, the white of the bone stained with ketchup, was in each plate. Outside, a foot and a half from the edge of the cliff, lay a straw-covered bottle of Chianti. It was empty.
“One's enough,” said Sap Snavely's brother-in-law. “Don't go too near the edge.”
I looked out over blackness. Off to the right were the lights of Escondido. Snavely's brother-in-law pointed with a big hand. “I live over that way. Nice country, huh? Reason I say, you don't speak like a native.”
“You think we could find the body tonight, Sheriff?”
“Hell, no. A thousand feet straight down. It wouldn't just drop if there's any wind to speak of. Feel it? There's a wind. The bottom isn't level, either. Ten-degree slope. It would bounce and roll some. We couldn't find it tonight. We'll find it tomorrow morning. Dead man won't go anywheres, I'll bet. You ain't a native, are you?”
“I'm from Washington,” I said. I clenched my fists and headed back for his car.
“State?” he said, following me.
“D. C.”
“Think she pushed him?”
“You son of a bitch,” I said. But I was impressed. No one had told the sheriff Lydia was up here with her husband. He had seen her face, though.
“Don't go losing your temper on me, young fellow. It's always possible. Maybe we'll know more when we find it tomorrow. I'll bet it rolled half a mile. Chaw?” ,
“No,” I said. He bit one off and worked it into one red cheek. He got behind the wheel and rolled down the window and spat. Neither of us spoke again.
In the morning, they found the body. It had landed on its head and the head was absolutely demolished. It had to be identified by fingerprints, which were on file at the observatory. It was Ralph, all right. It had bounced or rolled several hundred , feet, or the wind had carried it that far from the face of the cliff, or both. There would be a routine county coroner's inquest later. Marianne and I had remained overnight at the house.
The Second Longest Night Page 15