by Orrie Hitt
“Right out of commencement and to a justice of the peace. The same night. My mother was furious. I didn’t care. She wasn’t the one who was getting married.”
“Parents are like that sometimes,” I said.
“It was wonderful for a while,” she said. She looked at me and frowned. “But I shouldn’t be talking to you like this.”
“That’s all right.”
“It seems as though I want to tell you everything. I don’t know why.”
“I like to listen.”
“Dell’s father was an attorney and he had some money. He wanted to have Dell be a lawyer, but Dell didn’t want to. Then he got Dell the job with Northern. At first, Dell did awfully good because he knew a lot of people, people with money, and they bought from him. Then his father died. I was only twenty-two then. Neither one of us knew how to handle money.”
“That’s nothing,” I said. “Look at Truman.”
“Mr. Walters left this property to me. That’s why it’s never been mortgaged. By the time Dell had gone through his inheritance I was getting scared about what was happening to us. He wanted to borrow on this, and the house which was also left to me, but I wouldn’t let him.”
“You showed good sense, Mrs. Walters.”
“Did I?” Her look was challenging. “We fought about it all the time. But we never fought in front of the children. We fought by ourselves and we fought like hell. I guess that’s why it ended like it did. Maybe I should have let him have his way about it.”
“It would have ended the same,” I said, thinking of the girl over the Grand Union. “Maybe later. But the same.”
Pretty soon the sun started to go down behind the rocks and we were in the shade. The kids had left the water and were now up on the bank, the boy making a sand house for his sister.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I sing in the choir Sunday nights.”
We swam slowly back to the shore. She had a good overhand stroke, easy and smooth, and she went through the water clean.
I wondered where she was going to change, but she solved that one for me when we got up to the car.
“I’ll leave my suit on until I get home,” she said.
The kids went off into the woods and after a while they came back, dressed. I helped the boy take the tent down and roll it up. I put that and the dishes in the trunk of their car and looked around to see if anything had been forgotten. I locked the trunk and handed her the keys.
“Thanks, Mr. Weaver. I’ve had a wonderful day.”
I could hear the kids inside of the car, fooling, their gay voices drifting back to us.
“I don’t know why you call me Mister.”
She looked down at her bare feet.
“I don’t know, either.”
“Let’s make it Nicky from now on.”
She curled her toes into the sand.
“All right — Nicky.”
“And I’ll call you?”
“Bess,” she said.
I watched the way her hair hung down to her shoulders, the tiny pulse beating in her throat. “I like that,” I said.
She looked up at me and for just a moment her face lingered there. I didn’t touch her with my hands or anything, only bent my head quickly and brushed my lips across her mouth.
“I’ll call you.”
“Yes,” she said, turning away. “Do that.”
I stood there and watched them drive off. Then I started to put my clothes on. I thought about last night and Irene and Sally and a lot of things that whirled around those two like a misty fog. And I also thought of something else.
Bess Walters was quite a woman.
CHAPTER XVI
SHEP SCHOFIELD’S POLICY WAS ISSUED the following week. Austin handed it to me personally, along with a filibuster about how I should place it.
“Stress the conversion privileges,” Austin said. “Bang away at him with that. Point out that he might sell a picture some day for big money and that he’ll be in a position to do something about a regular plan then. Impress on him that he might become uninsurable.”
I almost laughed that one right back to the home office.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
“How about placing it this week, Nicky?”
“I’ll try.”
“It would give us a better standing with the rest of the districts.” God damn that honor roll!
“You give it a try,” he said, as I left the office. “If you haven’t placed it by Saturday, I’ll go out and talk to that bird.”
“I’ll let you know.”
I went down to the street and walked over to the bank. I wrote out a check for six hundred dollars and cashed it. My bank account was going down faster than a hand-dug well in dry weather. I counted the money and stuffed it into my wallet.
Austin wouldn’t have to give me any help on this one.
After I got in the car I sat there for a long time, just looking at the policy.
Shephard Schofield. Fifty thousand dollars. Five-year renewable term on a guy who wouldn’t live that long. Fifty thousand dollars of coverage on a bastard if there ever was one. Fifty thousand wonderful dollars that could turn that lake in the mountains, almost overnight, into a paradise. No blisters on my hands. No figuring how to stretch an eight foot two-by-four out to ten feet. No more hiding in the bushes with Irene. No more worries. All roses.
I drove down to the Tavern and went inside. The bartender was sweeping the floor and singing “You Are My Sunshine.”
“Startin’ early today, ain’t you, Nicky?”
“Naw. Just the phone.”
“That’s what I mean. Every day at four. Now it’s in the morning. She must have something.” I winked at him.
“She has,” I said, and crawled into the booth. The phone clicked and her voice came to me over the wire. “You can drive on out,” she said. “He’s going to New York on the train. I’ve got to take him in to the station.”
“When?”
“Right now. He’s out in the garage getting some stuff ready.” Then she added, her voice husky, “He’s going to be gone a week, Nicky.”
My blood pounded.
“Must be important,” I said.
“He’s got some business. I don’t know what — but I can guess. He’s taking the train because he says he doesn’t feel like driving. I believe it. He’s getting worse, much worse.”
“They issued his policy,” I said. “This morning.”
There was a slight pause.
“Now I can uncross my fingers,” she said.
A slight chill crept over me.
“I hope he lives a while,” I said. “That’d make it look better.”
“We can’t do anything about it, Nicky.”
“No, I guess not.”
“Wait for me out in your car or up in the garage,” she said. “Not in the house. He’s got some men here putting air conditioning in his room. He thinks he can sleep better with that. He says he’s got asthma.”
“Maybe you won’t like that,” I said.
“Oh, we don’t have the same room.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“No, not since he’s been worse, And, Nicky?”
“Yes?”
“He hasn’t — not since you. I won’t let him.” Her voice was so low and intimate that I felt like I was right in bed with her.
“I’ll be right out,” I said. “Wait for me, darling.”
“Are you kidding?”
I threw her a kiss over the phone and hung up. The bartender was still singing the same song when I went outside.
On the way out of town I stopped and made a couple of collections. I had a lot more work that I ought to do, but that could wait. Some things can’t.
About a mile from their house I met Irene driving her walking corpse into town. She didn’t wave and neither did I. We just went about our business.
There was a truck parked in the driveway. I drove around that and put the Buick in
the garage, out of the sun. I sat there for a few minutes, wondering about Schofield and why he was taking such a lengthy trip to the city. It started to get hot in the car and I got out.
I climbed the stairs to the studio above.
It had been changed around since I had been there that first time. A small room had been constructed off to the right and I went over there and looked in. There was a vanity table in one corner and a good-sized mirror over that. Four or five bathing suits hung around on the wall and there were some good-looking dresses on a rack at one end. There was a door to the room, with a key on the inside of the lock.
I came back into the main part of the studio and began wandering around, putting in time and giving the place the once-over. It was pretty well cluttered up with easels and brushes and half-done pictures. There was a painting of Sally that looked like her and which had been done up by the brook. There was also another one, posed in shorts and halter, and I could tell that had been worked on in the studio. Both of the paintings, I thought, were fairly good.
When I reached the desk I didn’t open any of the drawers, merely glanced at the jumble of stuff on top of it. I started to walk away when I noticed a photo of Sally, pinned to a piece of paper, just her head showing above the telephone book that lay there cutting out the rest of the view. I picked up the paper. It was a letter to some guy in New York. I looked at the picture and my insides froze solid. She was naked, except for the panties which were down over her knees, like she was in the act of undressing.
The letter said:
Andy:
Look this over and see what you think. Have enough shots to run about five series on her. She’s got good lines and the way I did it, she was relaxed. Let me know and I’ll come in and talk it over.
Shep.
Below that, written in blue pencil, was the reply.
Bring the photos. Have you got any from the rear and from the side? Also one straight from the front. Can use some on the old one, too.
Andy.
For a long moment I held that letter in my hands, staring at her picture. Then I dropped it to the floor and went to work on the desk. I tore through every drawer, sorting the stuff wildly and cursing like a maniac. I found nothing more.
I put the stuff back in the drawers and dumped the old bills and sales literature in a heap on top, thinking what a God-damned little fool that Sally was. If she wanted to get the most out of what she had she might better go out and peddle it. At least, she would get some fun out of it that way. Doing it like this, she would get peanuts from guys with minds who were too cheap to spend two bucks for ten minutes of the real thing.
I went back and looked at that dressing room again. Everything seemed to be all right in there, so I came out into the studio again. When I glanced down toward the end of the building, along the partition, I had a feeling that something was wrong. I studied the lay-out of the room again and then moved down to the far wall real quick. I paced that back to the end, stepped out and paced the other side of the wall. The outside was about four feet longer.
The door was there all right, but there wasn’t any handle on it or exposed hinges and that’s why I hadn’t seen it. I opened the door and went in. I left it open and walked down to where the camera was on the tripod. I saw right off how he’d done it. The glass around the edge of the mirror over the vanity table was of the type which you can look through only one way. Into the dressing room. Where she changed her clothes. Where she stood naked and unafraid and unsuspecting.
“The dirty, miserable bastard!” I said, and swung my fist.
Blood shot from the cuts on my hand up over my arm. The glass rattled in a shower on the floor. I heard a scream and footsteps pound up the stairs.
“Nicky!”
She came and stood in the doorway. My hand throbbed. “Oh, my God! What happened, Nicky?”
“He won’t use that on anyone else,” I said, watching her come to me. She wore a plain white dress that looked good on her. I kicked the tripod and the camera went flying against the wall, smashing in small pieces. “Or that either,” I said. “The son-of-a-bitch! What kind of a creep is he?”
“Nicky!” She had her arms around me. My red blood stained her dress. “Don’t carry on so, darling! Please don’t!”
“Has he left yet?” I demanded harshly.
“Of course he isn’t here.”
“I mean, the station?”
“I watched him go out on the train.”
The whole thing, the knowledge of what he had done and how he had done it, rose up again and churned around inside. My knees were weak and only one thought kept leaping through my mind. I tried to stop thinking like that, but I couldn’t. I had to get my hands on him.
“I’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch!” I said.
“Nicky! Don’t say that!”
She had her arms tight around me, her body up close and soft. I could feel her shaking.
“Nicky, you mustn’t talk that way!”
“I know it.”
“Then don’t.”
“I can’t help it. If he would do that to her, what wouldn’t he do to you? The guy must be nuts, Irene. He’s got to be stopped.”
“I know,” she said, sobbing. “I know.”
“You can’t stay here — after this.”
“No.”
“You’re going to get out of here today.”
She lifted her head and kissed me on the lips. For a second we clung together.
“All right,” she said. She held my hand, looking down at it, and the blood dripped in a steady rhythm on the floor. “First, we’ve got to fix that.”
It wasn’t much of an injury. Just a bunch of small cuts that had spouted with the frenzy of sugar maples in the spring. She got a pan and some warm water and started to wash them out. The water got red and her face got white and I told her to get out of there. She went down and over to the house and brought back iodine and rolls of bandages. I felt like a stupid fool for what I had done.
After that we went to the house and I waited for her while she packed the things she wanted. The workmen had already left for the day and we were by ourselves.
“You’re not coming back here again,” I said.
“Don’t worry about that, Nicky.”
“This is for keeps.”
She stopped her packing and came across to where I stood in the doorway. Our lips met, our mouths open. “For always,” she said.
She had four bags and I carried these out and put them in the trunk of the Buick.
“Aren’t you going to lock the house?”
“I suppose I ought to.”
At the door she paused, looking back at me. I had watched her dress and I knew that she had hardly anything on underneath that pink creation that fit her tight all over. I began to get ideas.
“I’ll write a note to him,” she said. “Only take me a few minutes.”
“Not about where you’re going?”
She laughed.
“About where he can go.”
I wandered around the lawn, waiting for her and thinking about it. I was glad, now, that he hadn’t been handy when I’d discovered how he’d taken those pictures. Maybe I wouldn’t have killed him, but if he’d lived through what I’d have given him he’d have had to have a hospital full of doctors on his side to help him. Suddenly I felt sick. I had hated men before, and men had hated me, but I had never experienced a feeling such as I had for Shep Schofield. And I was afraid. I knew that if I met him again anything might happen. I didn’t want it to happen. There had to be some other way. There were laws for guys like that, and men who enforced those laws. Perhaps that was the way to do it.
After a while she came out of the house and we got into the car.
“Where to now?” she asked, as I backed to the road.
“Up to the cabin.”
“That’s what I thought.”
I grinned at her.
“Sorry?”
She slid across the seat. “No,” sh
e said. “Anxious.”
She asked for a cigarette but I didn’t have any. She looked in her purse and found the same thing.
“Look in the glove compartment,” I said.
She found a pack of Camels and the insurance policy on Shephard Schofield.
“They almost paid off on that this afternoon,” I said. “If he’d been around.”
“Please, Nicky, don’t say that again.”
“All right.”
“It isn’t him,” she said, her voice uneven. “It’s you, darling.” I took the cigarette from her lips.
“You’ve got to get a divorce,” I said. “When he gets back we’ll have to put things on the line with him.”
“No hitting him, Nicky.”
“No.”
“Promise, darling?”
“Sure,” I said. “As long as I know that it’s the end of it with him, I won’t have anything to scrap about. I just want it settled, over and done with. I want to flush it out of my system like you flush a toilet.”
“How romantic!”
“That’s how I feel about it.”
She turned the radio on, turned it off again.
“It may not be so easy,” she said. “He isn’t going to like it — not one bit. I don’t mean that he loves me so much that he couldn’t give me up. I don’t think he does love me. He just won’t want to lose anything to anybody else.”
“He’d better change his way of thinking,” I said. “Or rot in jail. That’s where they put guys like him.”
“You did a good job on the evidence,” she said. “You smashed it all to hell.”
I hadn’t thought of it in that light.
“Well, I’m not losing any sleep over it,” I said, swinging in at the entrance to the hotel. “When he gets back we’ll settle it some way.”
“And sensibly,” she said. She tapped the insurance policy on the dash. “We’ve got an investment in the guy, Nicky.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, remembering that. “Fifty thousand dollars — and every one of them queer.”
There were a lot of people around on the lawn and I told her that we’d better leave her bags in the car. I said that I could come down after dark and carry them up.
“But I wanted to change,” she pouted, as we linked our arms and sauntered up the path. “What will I wear?”
