“I don’t know this area at all well,” said Amanda doggedly, “and I have a very young child here whom I can’t just leave.”
There was another judgmental pause and then a very cool, final, “Well, it’s her horse.”
Amanda didn’t like her. “As a matter of fact, it isn’t,” she said pleasantly, a fact which they both knew made Mrs. Balsam all the more responsible. Where is the horse, in case I can get hold of someone to help?”
The directions sounded complicated, and she wrote them down: Take the left fork after the feed store and then another left; there was a dirt road which was really a private driveway, so skip that and continue about a quarter of a mile to a big field on the right. There were other horses there, and at last view the palomino had been standing under trees at the edge.
Amanda thanked the aloof voice and hung up distractedly. Drougette was a valuable mare and had been entrusted to Mrs. Balsam. Had that earlier whinny been by way of farewell? Or—all pale horses must look pretty much alike at night—was it Drougette at all?
She would have to go and see. She put on her coat, got the flashlight, went out again into the frigid dark.
The stars were gone. She walked in a moving pocket of stillness broken only by her own footsteps, and when she left the reflected glow from the house and switched on the flashlight a baby owl on a fence post subsided out of its feathers and glided away. Amanda felt as if she were emerging onto the blackest of stage sets, with countless eyes aware of her and some thunderclap thing to come.
No friendly shape stirred in the corral. It didn’t need a strand-by-strand inspection of the wire, which she had no intention of making in this bone-piercing cold, to tell her that the mare had indeed found a way out.
For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder if her aunt had acquired an enemy without realizing it. Amanda had once declined an offer of yard work by three boys, explaining that she did it herself for exercise, and found the front seat of her car strewn with fiberglass the next morning. There was no proof that that had been a retaliatory gesture, even though the boys had stared at her in sullen disbelief, and there were horses who were escape artists. Still, twice in one week seemed odd, as Mrs. Balsam could not have enjoyed her after-dark expedition and would have taken steps to see that it did not happen again. Or maybe— Christmas week—she hadn’t been able to get anyone and had simply done some amateur repairs herself and hoped for the best.
Call Justin, thought Amanda, returning to the house with a beleaguered impulse to cry. First the Afghan, now the mare. Rosie at least was here, switched over onto her other side, silky black hair straying across her face. Amanda tucked it gently back and closed the window.
She dialed Justin. She warned herself after the first two unanswered rings that he was not going to be home, so as to prepare herself, and it didn’t help at all.
Up until seven o’clock that evening everything had been going well, with the ride East tomorrow arranged for Claude out of a mixture of bribes and threats. Sweet hadn’t dared go near the Balsam house since delivering his half brother there the night before last, but Mrs. Balsam would be leaving as usual at one-thirty. Meanwhile, there was water in the shelter, and in his own kitchen Sweet had filled his pockets, after that frantic telephone call, with a welter of candy bars and boxes of raisins intended for the Christmas stockings of Teresa’s nieces and nephews.
The police artist’s sketch bore very little resemblance to Claude. He had gone too faithfully by the “flattened features” described by Beryl Creen, which did not take into account a wide sharp mouth, and the other witness had overestimated Claude’s height by nearly two inches.
In any case, cautious inquiries indicated that no one had come looking for Claude. There was no employer to wonder at his nonappearance for work. The news bulletins—and the Sweets’ radio stayed on habitually from the time they woke in the morning until they went to bed—were beginning to emphasize the delay in getting a police car to the scene, and, tacitly, the probability that the fugitive and his captive had been out of the area before there was even an official report.
So far, so good, even though there were things that Sweet blocked out of his memory. Still, he had belatedly realized tonight that a lot of businesses closed at noon on Christmas Eve. Would Mrs. Balsam’s? Easy enough to find out, by indirection; he would offer to come around tomorrow afternoon and measure for some shelves she wanted put up in her plant room.
The strange voice, belonging to the niece he hadn’t even known existed, had given him a shock. On top of that, like a sustaining brick pulled out from under, Patch, provider of the ride—Sweet did not know his real name, but had reliable information about participation in a recent liquor store holdup—had telephoned to say tersely that his own plans had changed and it was tonight or not at all. Although he was unaware of his passenger’s identity he was suspiciously take-it-or-leave-it, and Sweet had already pushed him to the limit.
To duplicate the action of two nights ago—setting the mare loose with a sharp spank and then making a lightning descent on Mrs. Balsam’s house as soon as she had left it—seemed dangerous, but there wasn’t time to arrange an alternative plan. There would soon be an even broader hue-and-cry, and Claude had to be out of the state, equipped with a blondish wig which Sweet had acquired yesterday, when it started.
Now, from above, he watched Mrs. Balsam’s house, and waited. Teresa would have made her call about the mare ten minutes ago, but nothing was happening. There was a phone booth a mile and a half down the road, and after a further five minutes Sweet used it, and was stunned.
The fact that Mrs. Balsam was in the hospital could only mean that Claude had emerged from the shelter against all prohibitions, been discovered, and attacked her. Why hadn’t there been anything in the news? Ellie Peale was very much on the public mind, and every incident of violence involving women was being closely scrutinized.
The niece was there in the house with a small child; there must be a way to turn that to advantage. On the other hand, Teresa had reported that she had said she might be able to get someone to help—Sweet assumed this to be a man—and he would have to watch a while for that.
He was cold at his vantage post. He was not nearly as cold as Ellie Peale.
Chapter 6
Amanda resettled herself purposefully with her book, discovering by page twenty-three that she was going to have to start all over again. It had begun with a fashionable funeral, but now she was looking at something incomprehensible about children gathering strawberries.
Her worry about Apple had largely dissipated—nothing much could happen to a dog under the escort of a full-grown Doberman pinscher—but Drougette was another matter. All else apart, what about the spectre of a wrongful-death suit? Very occasionally a car traveling at speed collided with a galloping horse, with disastrous results to all concerned. So far as Amanda could judge from the complex directions given to her by the woman caller and her own hazy notion of this area, the mare couldn’t be more than a mile and a half away, but would she stay there, harmlessly nibbling at bark and enjoying the company of other horses?
She must, because it would be unthinkable to leave a sleeping two-year-old while she found a rope and drove off into the night with no idea of the extent of her mission; that was the kind of errand undertaken by the Judge Craters of the world. It was equally unthinkable to wake and dress her small charge and take her along on this bitter night. A developing chill which would be only a mild concern with another child could be perilous indeed for Rosie Lopez.
Was it possible that, even though she had been fed and watered so recently, Drougette might wander back to the corral by herself? If so, she had better find the gate open. Amanda put on her coat, stood for a moment while she pinned down an associated thought, and took her car keys from her handbag.
She couldn’t remember locking her car, in her preoccupation over Mrs. Balsam, and although the chances were probably less than those of winning the Irish sweepstakes it ha
d to be considered that there was an escaped convict still abroad, presumably looking for transport or (far worse) a place to lurk until morning and the emergence of the unsuspecting car owner.
From outside, there was a curious rushing, whomping sound. The timing was eerie, and Amanda snatched her hand back from the knob of the patio door and stayed riveted for long seconds before, nothing further ensuing, she opened the door and peered cautiously out.
A huge cottonwood limb, of killing weight to anyone standing inattentively under it, had been weakened by the earlier winds and taken its time about crashing down. After a little wary listening Amanda skirted it, undid the catch on the corral gate and propped it wide open, and proceeded around the house to her car.
She hadn’t locked the driver’s door. She shone the flashlight in and used her key. The scrupulous person who had restored Mrs. Balsam’s car keys to her handbag hadn’t locked the Rabbit, and Amanda did that now; for some reason the slamming echoes seemed as sharply telltale as black footprints in new snow. She ran back the way she had come, the flashlight beam swinging brilliantly, but that was a mixture of cold and superstition. She had no sensation whatever of being watched.
She had now, as stoically as though she had actually reached him and been told that he was sorry he couldn’t get away from wherever he was, given up on Justin, which meant that she had to close her mind to the problem of the palomino. There was no one else to whom she could say, at this hour, Would you bring a rope and catch a horse for me?”
She had left her own telephone number at the hospital, not anticipating the night’s turn of events, and although it was unlikely that they had tried to reach her she dialed.
“Would you hold on a minute, please, Miss Morley? I believe there’s something—”
This could not be bad news, Amanda assured herself, still gripping the receiver in surprise because she had expected the stereotyped statement, and the alert voice was presently back. Mrs. Balsam had been sedated for the night, but earlier she had managed to speak. Just the one word—the nurse with her at the time thought it was “sell’—but she had said it more than once.
Sell the house, that would mean, thought Amanda when she had hung up. Well, that was only logical. Stroke victims sometimes recovered almost completely, but that would be a long process, and even though Mrs. Balsam had been left comfortably well-off and a part-time nurse could be arranged, the place where she had lain helpless and terrified would hold indelible memories.
Meanwhile, her terrible silence had been unlocked, however tinily; it must have been like a pinprick in an intolerable tension. As if some of the release extended to her too, Amanda took off the heels she had been wearing since seven-thirty that morning, padded down the hall, looked in at Rosie, and switched on a lamp in her aunt’s bedroom.
It was attractive and tranquil, part sitting room as well, with a small desk and striped satin chair, a long bookcase under the big window which looked across a river of lights to the mountains, a comfortably tufted hassock. And, of course, the ubiquitous gray-blue carpeting.
Amanda drew the curtains and took off the very simple larkspur suit she had also worn all day. She was taller than her aunt, but one of the closets behind louvered doors yielded a robe which was wearable and a pair of slippers too small but backless. Hand on the light switch, she took it away in response to some fragmented suggestion from her brain, walked around the bed, pulled open the top middle bureau drawer.
Mrs. Balsam kept her casual jewelry in a sumptuous leather case nestled under scarves and stockings. The rest, including a diamond and sapphire dinner ring with matching earrings and a bracelet with alternating links of gold and emeralds, reposed in the inside pocket of an old raincoat with fraying cuff’s. “I can’t see going to the bank every time I want to wear something,” she had told Amanda in explanation of this novel arrangement, “and as they’ll be yours you ought, to know where they are.”
It was not quite the harebrained idea it might have seemed, because any rational burglar would have bypassed the kind of garment used for gardening in favor of a pale mink cape. And it was still working: When Amanda thrust a hand deep into the raincoat’s pocket a palmful of sparkle came out.
What had she thought, if it was anything as organized as thought? That her aunt might unwittingly have left a door unlocked, and returned to her house for her letters to find some menacing stranger emerging from it? Been given a violent push, precipitating the stroke?
The ghost of personal attack was laid. Amanda switched off the lamp, closed the door of the guest room very softly because this part of the house was chilly with the window lowered there, and jumped at the loud imperative clatter of the door knocker.
There were people who habitually announced themselves in this fashion, as though come with foreclosure papers, and they were not as a rule likable people. Amanda called militantly through the crack, “Who is it?” and received a terse “Colonel Robinson” in reply.
An escaped convict could call himself anything he liked, and a military title would be a nice touch. Amanda, who had left the light on for Apple, opened the door a stingy two inches and then opened it wider at once.
A tall trim pink-skinned man stood there, close-clipped white head tipped back so as to gaze disfavorably down at her. Behind him, now haltered, was Drougette, looking, with her ashen forelock, like a fairy-tale animal of silver and gold. At the foot of the driveway, a car with its headlights on throbbed impatiently.
“I believe this is your horse,” said the man without prelude.
“Yes.” It wasn’t a time for hairsplitting. “Thank you very much for bringing her back. Where did you—?”
“In my wife’s bonsai garden,” said the colonel uncompromisingly.
Those miniature trees, patiently trained into the staggery, asymmetrical shapes that appeared in Japanese prints, trampled happily under iron hooves. “I’m sorry,” said Amanda, feeling shriveled. “I know my aunt, Mrs. Balsam, that is, will be glad to do whatever you think is fair. If you could just tether the horse to one of the car bumpers while I— automatically, she indicated her robe and slippers “—I’ll see that you get your halter back tomorrow.
But the colonel, expecting a woman of his own age, had taken approving inventory of the cream and green robe which on Amanda was not quite knee-length, and the copper-brown hair beginning to tendril out of its top-of-the-head knot. If you can lend me a flashlight, I’ll be glad to put her away for you.”
It was nearly ten minutes before he knocked again, an interval during which the waiting car headlights snapped off with a suggestion of temper. “Wires were down at the northeast corner,” he said, handing the flashlight back to Amanda, “but I’ve gotten them to hold at least for tonight. That’s a beautiful mare, by the way.”
Amanda renewed her thanks. “And about your wife’s bonsai—”
“Unnatural damn little things,” confided the colonel. “What did you say your name was?”
Amanda told him and he withdrew into the dark, pink and military but no longer parade ground. She closed and locked the door with the conviction that her immediate world was beginning to right itself. The Afghan was still at large, true, but Rosie slept snugly in the guest room, Drougette had been returned without incident (or almost; how much did bonsai trees cost?) and was safely confined for the night; most importantly of all, her aunt had managed to speak.
Head for a while, because she was not an early retirer, and then give Apple one last call and go to bed. Amanda turned down the thermostat in preparation, propped pillows against one end of the couch, and stretched herself out.
Sitting in his pickup on a curve above the house, Sweet watched the disintegration of his plan.
This could not be the man the niece had hoped to enlist in the capture of the mare, which he had last seen cantering off into the dark. It was much too soon; the driver of the car had stayed in it; the white-haired man, visible in the light at the front door although Sweet could not see the woman inside, st
ood there less than a minute both times he appeared. This was the behavior of strangers rather than friends, neighborhood residents who had spotted the palomino, knew where it belonged, and, conscientious as most South westerners were in such matters, brought it back.
Which might mean there was someone else coming, someone to whom, after summoning him out on what had proved to be an unnecessary mission, the niece would be bound to offer coffee or a drink.
Patch would not wait past the appointed time; that was implicit. Enragingly, all Sweet needed in Mrs. Balsam’s house was ten minutes, maybe less, and he and Claude would be safely out of there. A way had to exist, because the alternative . . .
He had been fingering his short woolly beard as he gazed concentratingly down at his objective; now, he dropped his hand as if it had burned him. The speculation as to whether Mrs. Balsam had died had been in the back of his mind ever since Teresa had relayed the information that she was in the hospital, but it was suddenly in the very forefront, bright and sharp.
He drove down the hill and away, reminding himself that although she retained possession of the house he had one strong advantage over the niece, because she was obviously unaware that she and the child were not alone in the house. When he had gone about a mile he passed a small abandoned church, and did not even turn his head.
The couch was extremely comfortable. After a little while Amanda sat up and appropriated Rosie’s wool blanket; after a further interval, when pages of her book began to flip over as her eyelids dropped, she reached up behind her, discarded one of the propping cushions, turned off the lamp, and stretched out full length.
This was the kind of drowsiness that had an eggshell fragility at its onset; to break it now might be to invite hours of wakefulness later. The soft light from the hall did not penetrate here. Apple would come, presently, and Amanda could not fail to hear her, and then she would get up and wash her face and brush her teeth and crawl into the other guest room bed.
The Menace Within Page 5